Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world--"The Last Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci.
"The Last Supper" is painted on the dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church in ancient times, I suppose.
It was what I thought when I stood before "The Last Supper" and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and beauties and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a hundred years before they were born.
After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a very miracle of art once.
Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will comprehend how much "The Last Supper" is damaged when I say that the spectator can not really tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians.
I had reached the conclusion, it will be remembered, that the extra baggage of my friend, the artist, would prove to be pictures, or at least a picture; for I knew he had been for several weeks in conference with Nicolino:--and now here was a box, which, from its shape, COULD possibly contain nothing in the world but a copy of Leonardo's "Last Supper;" and a copy of this very "Last Supper," done by Rubini the younger, at Florence, I had known, for some time, to be in the possession of Nicolino.
I pitied him from the bottom of my heart--but could not, for that reason, quite forgive his incommunicativeness in the matter of the "Last Supper." For this I resolved to have my revenge.
The Holy Grail was said to be a dish used by Christ at the
Last Supper. It was also said to have been used to hold the sacred blood which, when Christ hung upon the cross, flowed from his wounds.
Generally each play was presented by a single guild (though sometimes two or three guilds or two or three plays might be combined), and sometimes, though not always, there was a special fitness in the assignment, as when the watermen gave the play of Noah's Ark or the bakers that of the
Last Supper. In this connected form the plays are called the Mystery or Miracle Cycles.
Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man -- he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here -- a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his
last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught.
The museum is featuring the work "Yo Mama's
Last Supper," which substitutes a naked woman for Christ.
As the whole world now knows, Yo Mama is a five-panel picture in which Cox appears naked, as Jesus, surrounded by male disciples--ten black, one white--at the
Last Supper. As an artwork it's negligible, glossily produced but awkwardly composed and, to my eye, rather silly.