Panels from the High Altar of the Charterhouse of Saint-Honoré, Thuison-les-Abbeville: The Last Supper

French · c. 1495

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

Panel: 117.2 × 50.9 cm (46 1/8 × 20 in.); Framed: 137.2 × 69.8 cm (54 × 27 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

This late fifteenth-century panel brings a quiet solemnity to one of the most painted subjects in Western art, rendering the moment of the Last Supper with the restrained gravity characteristic of northern French devotional painting. Created for the high altar of the Charterhouse of Saint-Honoré at Thuison-les-Abbeville around 1495, the work reflects the deep Flemish influence that shaped painting in Picardy during this period — precise draping of cloth, carefully modelled faces, and a composed spatial arrangement that holds the eye without theatrical gesture. Carthusian monasteries were exacting patrons; their altarpieces were made for prolonged contemplative viewing rather than public spectacle, and this panel rewards that kind of attention. The anonymous French master works within a tradition that prized clarity and stillness over drama, letting the weight of the moment speak through posture and expression rather than action. The altarpiece was eventually dispersed and its surviving panels are now held across major collections, with this scene residing at the Art Institute of Chicago — a rare window into an intact late medieval devotional programme. The hand-painted oil reproduction honours the original's measured palette and jewel-like surface quality, capturing the same meditative presence that the unknown French painter intended for the monks who knelt before it each day.