The Institution of the Eucharist

Possibly a design for an overdoor, now lost, for the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg's country seat at Veitschöchheim. In the Vancouver exhibition catalogue, George Knox noted that the elongated horizontal composition, with the clustered figures set to one side, is reminiscent of two overdoors connected with the project: Christ Chasing the Money-Changers from the Temple (Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and Christ and the Barren Fig Tree (Vancouver, Private Collection; Vancouver, 1989, op. cit., no. 10). At the same date, Tiepolo revisited the theme of The Institution of the Eucharist in two pictures whose compositions again echo the arrangement of the present drawing (one dated 1752, Munich, Alte Pinakothek; and one dated 1753, Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst). When Tiepolo returned to the subject in later life, in a drawing now in the Louvre that forms part of his New Testament series, he radically changed the composition to suit the required upright format. He transformed the table into a horseshoe-shape and placed the figures in a circle around it, thereby diffusing much of the tension generated by the arrangement in the present drawing (inv. RF 1713bis; A. Gealt, Domenico Tiepolo: A New Testament, New York, 2006, no. 181).