168. 6th Century Church: Which Last Supper was it?

A Last Supper one thousand years old

The Last Supper "strip"

Before anyone starts complaining about the poor quality of the picture of this Last Supper mural strip running along the side of the Longobard church, I had better explain that it has been there for the past thousand years and country churches are never given the care and attention by the powers that be that more important churches are. It is just near miraculous that anything at all has survived when considering that the existence of these murals were unknown before 1936. It was thanks to the roof falling down that it was discovered beneath the whitewashing done during the years of the plague, when the church was used as a morgue, that such “creatures” existed. So you will pardon me if I make a bit of a fuss about it, won’t you?

On the Mural we see a half crouched Judas in darkish red take the morsel of bread from the outstretched hand of Jesus. It’s blurred, I know, but if you squint your eyes up a bit, you will be able to see it.

It is The Last Supper of which Evangelist?

John leans next to Jesus. Judas' hand creeps unto the table to dip the bread
at the same time as Jesus.

There’s no way that anyone has been able to discover who the artist was, however, it must have been someone who knew his Gospels well- all four of them because he chose to paint the version of only one of those Gospels- that of Saint John. Whereas in Mathew and Mark it is narrated that the person who is to betray Jesus is he whom was to “dip his hand into the dish with me,” in Luke it only mentions “And yet, here with me on the table is the hand of the man who betrays me:” in John we have “Who is it Lord?’ ‘It is the one’ Jesus replied, ‘to whom I give the piece of bread that I shall dip into the dish.’ He dipped the piece of bread and gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot.” Later John adds “As soon as Judas had taken the piece of bread he went out.”

Antonio Zago: Artist of the 1490s Murals

Having said that the painter of The Last Supper remains anonymous you may think I have overlooked the fact of not mentioning the name of the artist who painted the Madonna of the Orange in the previous blog. Unfortunately it is not clear enough to say it was Antonio Zago who left his name in block capital letters as a footnote under one of the murals. It is known Antonio Zago painted the rest of the 15^th Century murals but the one of the “Orange” may be disputed- it just doesn’t seem to have the same characteristics- could have been one of his apprentices or followers- they would all qualify to go under the Master’s name.

Antonio Zago who left his name in block capital letters as a footnote under one of the murals was the artist of most of the murals of the 15^th Century cycle.


Related Posts:

134. Excavating back to the 6^th Century

167. 6^th Century Church: Orange of Pomegranate?