Jesus and Judas at the Last Supper
Jesus answered "The one who has dipped his [bread with his] hand into the bowl with me will betray me" (Matt 26:23). I learned today that Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper with the hands of Jesus and Judas simultaneously reaching for bread. I've indicated the simultaneous motion in the image above (click to enlarge). Judas, being distracted by the conversation between John and Peter, is not aware that he is marking himself as the one to betray Jesus by his grasping for the bread. He is not privy to Jesus' statement, which is directed off to the right of the painting (to Thomas and James, to Jesus' left). The Gospel story is thus made realistic/plausible. It is also made miraculous--a "coincidence" that cannot be mere chance. Is the simultaneity between Jesus and Judas also indicative of spiritual mystery? Is God working all things together for good to bring about a wondrous redemption out of what the human being intends as evil? Do the folded, peaceful hands of John represent a sort of "hyphen" between Jesus and Judas, uniting their acts into one great saving mystery?
posted by S and C at 8:16 PM
8 Comments:
Just one ting that really doesnt make sense is when did Peter have a sex change??? The person sitting next to Jesus is definitely female!!
Oops looks like John had the sex change...!
Isn't it a fact that the person sitting next to Jesus is Mary Magdalene?!
Have you all been reading too much of the Divinci Code!!! :-)
i beleive women would have wore vales at the time
Looks as if woman and if so looks like she pregnant also looks tired 😴
This is only a painting, yes Mary was one of his apostles but that does not mean she was there for the last super. She is only biblically mentioned as one of the 3 that were there when Jesus died and that he appeared to her first after he had risen. The DaVinci code does give you a different perspective makes your mind wander that's for sure.
Ugh. Too people fail to realize that the Italian Renaissance was an artistic era in which narrative paintings are illustrating famous texts, whether Classical or Christian. Thus, if Leonardo paints a Last Supper then this is illustrating a notable text--in this case the John Gospel from the Bible as that Gospel narrates the Last Supper. So with that, we can eliminate the very silly idea that this person immediately next to Jesus's right (our left) is Mary Magdalene--for she was not present at the Last Supper in ANY Gospel account. This is John the Apostle / Evangelist as he traditionally appears in art extending back several centuries to the later Middle Ages--given a feminized appearance as by tradition he became a disciple in his youth (so, he is not yet a man both in the fully grown biological sense and the socially independent sense). Plenty of Medieval and Renaissance images bear this out. We can also rule out Mary Magdalene by the dress code here: John wears Jesus's colors according to clothing: variants of red and blue as part of identity as the "beloved disciple" (his being seated next to Jesus indicates this too).
Likewise, the painting was made for a Catholic monastery and the painting of something so unorthodox if not even heretical wouldn't pass muster with the church authorities. Art historians know better than to interpret Renaissance images just based on appearances alone as such can be misleading--as this era of humanistic painting was all about visualizing stories from literary texts. Everything about the picture--esp. the grouping of Peter, Judas, John and Jesus--conforms to the Last Supper account given in the John Gospel. Positing this person as Mary Magdalene fails to do so as it does not conform to the textual evidence that motivates the painting.
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