Maundy Thursday, then and now

That it's a masterpiece is a given. If it isn't the most famous painting in the world, it is second only to the Mona Lisa. Thousands--millions, I suppose--go to Milan to see it every year. 

It's the work of Leonardo, the quintessential "Renaissance man," who could do almost anything. If he were alive today, Italy would contend for the World Cup. Art lovers fawn about the painting's "perspective"--how all of its lines point at Christ's forehead. But then Da Vinci loved math too. 

However, The Last Supper was an grand experiment that failed badly. Should Milan be in your travel plans, keep in mind that what you'll see in the convent holds few, if any, of Leonardo's brush marks. The master was far better at math than he was at mixing paint. The Last Supper is no fresco, no mix of paint and wet plaster. Leonardo worked on dry plaster, so what you see is a thousand touch ups and more than a few wholesale restorations.

And it wasn't always so highly celebrated. Once upon a time, the monks cut a chunk out and made it a door. Napoleon's army used the room as a stable, and the Nazis--horrors!--actually bombed the place, turning some adjacent walls into rubble. 

What's so famously pictured is Maundy Thursday, the night Jesus was betrayed, particularly, of course, what Christians call "the last supper," Christ's final meal with his disciples, the consecration of a sacrament. Lest you imagine Christ's actual "last supper" to be a stunning moment of blessed reverence, have a look at what Leonardo saw: half the crowd isn't even seated. It's an unruly classroom--only the three to the left of Jesus seem to be engaged with him, but they're unmistakably angry. By the looks of things, "Take, eat, remember and believe" didn't have much currency in the room, even with the most faithful. 

What's here is a very specific moment in Christian history. Jesus Christ has just explained that one of them, one of his beloved, isn't. There's a traitor in the room. What roils the twelve is who. None of them looks at Judas (third from left), even though the rat's got the money bag in his right hand. 

There's very little reverence in The Last Supper. There's far more accusation and anger. It's not pretty.

Come to think of it, that table looks a ton like the U.S. of A. today. You'd have to go back to the 1860s to picture a less peaceable Maundy Thursday in America--brother against brother (that's Peter with the weapon). In just a few hours, the Attorney General of the United States will have a news conference most Democrats swear he shouldn't, at least not before releasing the Mueller report. We're not at war here, but almost.

On the political right, Michelle Bachmann claims we've never had a President more biblical and Godly. If she could, she'd photoshop our President's mug onto Jesus's shoulder so he'd be the center point of that vaunted perspective. It's all about him, which is just the way he likes it.  

On the left, he's Judas, the one holding the money bag, a ham-fisted political bully so given to lying that he believes the litany of falsehoods he utters. 

This morning, we're like the table really, looking who to blame for the bedlam. 

History says it took only a decade or so before Leonardo's masterpiece began to flake, then drop away. What's up there on the Milan convent wall is, only in conception, the work of Da Vinci. 

But he got something right, didn't he? The paint may have thinned and long ago disappeared, but what's happening at the table needs a blessing. As we do. All of us.