No, it’s not The Last Supper – it’s the Council of Elrond. A friend of mine over at Facebook made me aware of the 100-gigaton-whoopass illustrations in a Tumblr post by egelantier, who explains that these illustrations by Sergey Yuhimov adorned her childhood Russian edition of Lord of the rings.

Have a look at this representation of Gandalf’s confrontation with the balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dûm:

For a look at a three-part post with many more illustrations, hop over to Tumblr. These are astounding. I have not had much success finding out more information about Yuhimov on the net, but I’d love to see more of his work.

The Old Wolf has spoken.