One event around the first Easter is the little excursion to Emmaus by a couple of clueless and dejected disciples who find themselves joined by a third party. The account is loaded with massively-significant things – walking and conversing intimately with a very real Jesus, urging this “Stranger” to stay with them, and being finally made aware of His presence in the breaking of the bread. One is easily moved by the disciples’ retrospective assessment of the trip, “Did not our hearts burn within us?”

Arguably, one of the most recognizable images of that Emmaus trip was painted by Swiss artist, Robert Zünd.

Robert Zünd was a Swiss landscape painter. After attending high school in his home town, he was taught drawing and painting in the studios of Jakob Schwegler (1793–1866).

In 1852 Zünd traveled to Paris. At the Louvre, he studied the works of the Dutch and French masters of the 17th Century. His first major work was The Harvest (1860), now in the Kunstmuseum Basel. That same year, he copied works by Claude Lorrain, Ruisdael, and Paulus Potter in the Gemälde Gallery, Dresden. In 1863, he settled on the outskirts of Lucerne, and rarely left for any extended period of time after that. During the period from 1867 to 1877, his religious faith began to appear as biblical motifs in his pictures, such as The Road to Emmaus.