The engraving titled “The Last Supper” by the French master Paul Devaux was created in the second half of the 17th century. It is a graphic reinterpretation of Peter Paul Rubens’s celebrated painting “The Last Supper”, executed in 1631–1632 and now housed in Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera.

Working in the studio of Pierre Landry, Devaux faithfully preserved Rubens’s dynamic composition — yet introduced subtle, meaningful alterations. Most notably, he repositioned the Apostle John to Christ’s right hand and replaced the dog resting beneath the table with a jug, a symbolic vessel evoking purity and spiritual transformation. Perhaps most striking in this work is the gaze of Judas Iscariot: alone among the apostles, he looks not at Christ, but directly at the viewer. This powerful device — inherited from Rubens — breaks the pictorial plane, drawing the observer into the sacred drama and implicating them in its moral weight.

This technique — known today as “breaking the fourth wall” — was formally theorized in the 18th century by the French philosopher and playwright Denis Diderot, who coined the term to describe the invisible barrier between stage and audience (mostly in theater performances). Yet Rubens, decades earlier, in 1631, had already mastered this tool in visual art.

Judas’s piercing stare functions as a silent, haunting question: “And you?” — compelling each viewer to reflect (“Have you, too, betrayed someone?), touching on one’s intimate thoughts and secrets.

The engraving is executed in the etching technique, which enabled Devaux to capture the dramatic contrasts of light and shadow so characteristic of the Baroque style. Through dynamic lines and a masterful play of textures — from the deep folds of garments to the grain of the wooden table — he creates a sense of lively, almost tangible movement. Notably, both Rubens’s original painting and Devaux’s engraving carry not only religious, but also didactic meaning. During the era of the Counter-Reformation, such works served to remind the faithful of the sacred importance of the Eucharist — the sacrament instituted by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.

This work stands as a testament to how 17th-century artists honored — and reimagined — the legacy of their predecessors. Devaux did not merely copy Rubens; he translated his vision into the language of print, adapting it for wider dissemination and deeper contemplation. Today, Paul Devaux’s “The Last Supper” is housed in the Valery Andreyevich Karpov Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts, where it remains part of the Ural museum’s remarkable collection of Western European graphic art.