Riffing on the Last Supper

Our younger daughter, Emily, was out celebrating her birthday with friends this past week. As they ate dinner they noticed that the wall behind them was, well, rather pious. Emily has been known to be a tad irreverent at times, so an impromptu Last Supper ensued, with homage to Leonardo DaVinci. She shared the photo with family, somewhat concerned that it would offend her minister Dad (not her minister brother?) My response was "You ain't no Jesus, Emsta, but you are remarkable. And you need to evangelized a few more disciples."  It is a rather clever take on Leonardo's late 15th century freeze-frame of Jesus' final meal with his disciples, one of the pivotal paintings of Renaissance art which monks eventually saw fit to defile with a door from the refectory.
  




There is a 500-year tradition of artists creating versions of DaVinci's fresco, even though his work did not represent the way first-century Jews celebrated the Passover. The table is wrong, the food is not representative, and even the guest-list is sketchy. Yet this image is imprinted on our brains, even in the versions which venture into the realm of the sacrilegious. Jesus with a selfie-stick? Andy Warhol's version with corporate logos? This was one of the final works by Warhol, created in the 1980s and it was a commission sponsored by a bank in Milan , just across the street from the Church of Santa Maria della Grazie, where Leonardo's original can be seen. 
 


I wasn't aware that Warhol was a Roman Catholic, attended Mass, and wrote often about religion in his diaries. According to great art historian and Picasso biographer, John Richardson, Warhol  “took considerable pride in financing his nephew’s studies for the priesthood. And he regularly helped out at a shelter serving meals to the homeless and hungry… The knowledge of this secret piety inevitably changes our perception of an artist who fooled the world into believing that his only obsessions were money, fame, glamour…”




What do you think folks? Is this all shocking irreverence or homage to both artist and Jesus, the Christ?