A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper” is for many Christians the clearest image they have of The Last Supper. He painted it on one wall of a monastic refectory where the brothers would have sat along the other three walls for their meals. For them Christ and His disciples would have been present with them at every meal.

We see Leonardo’s painting.

The original painting [created 1495-98] has deteriorated very badly over the years. This is an early copy, possibly painted around 1520

But take it out of that context as has been done ever since, and while its still great art, Leonardo’s painting is shown to be bad history. Many of the details in Leonardo’s painting are inaccurate: the painting shows daylight outside the window, but the actual Last Supper took place at night; the figures are seated about the tables on benches, whereas Jesus and his disciples reclined on couches; it shows a meal of fish and ordinary bread, yet a Passover meal consists of unleavened bread, roast lamb and bitter herbs; it shows only Jesus and the twelve apostles, omitting both women and children, yet the Passover had to be eaten by whole families including women and children, the latter being present to ask questions during the meal so that they can learn the meaning of the Passover meal from their parents. Moreover, it shows thirteen Renaissance Italian males in oriental costume in a Florentine palace, not a Jewish celebration of the Passover in Jerusalem.

A group of Roman Catholic men and women from Ireland felt that this famous painting of the Last Supper has shaped many peoples’ opposition to the ordination of women, for “there were no women present at the Last Supper!” Certainly, the presence of women at the Last Supper cannot be proved definitively one way or the other, but it is more than probable that women were present, somebody had to prepare the meal, and the next day it was the women who stood at the foot of the cross when the men ran away. So, in 1998 they commissioned the Polish artist Bohdan Piasecki to paint the Last Supper as a Jewish Passover meal with women and children present and with all the men wearing prayer shawls. Eating with their right hands and reclining around a low table on cushions and rugs. In the front of the painting can be seen the basin and a towel from the washing of the feet.

We see Bohdan Piasecki’s painting.

Instead of the Last Supper looking like a male board meeting it now looks like a family meal. Which would you choose to be present at?