La Dernière Cène du réfectoire du Monastère de Santa Cruz de Coimbra par Maître Hodart: considérations préalables sur la place d’une oeuvre singulière

Abstract

This article aims to deal with an issue that has haunted the historiography of the Portuguese Renaissance for quite a long time. The magnificent life-size terracotta group depicting the Last Supper in the refectory of the Monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra is today one of the masterpieces of the city’s Machado de Castro Museum, as well as an enigma. Both the identity and the journey of the mysterious master Hodart, to whom a few meagre sources make it possible to attribute the group, remain the subject of much speculation. This text therefore proposes to place this emblematic work in the wider concert of European arts of the first quarter of the 16th century and to recognise possible links with Antoine Juste’s work for the château of Gaillon, a few years earlier. This re-evaluation of Master Hodart’s formal dossier leads to question above all the link that can be established, at the beginning of the modern era, between the stylistic options of such “effet de réel” and the devotional orientation of religious observance.