Last Supper, Matthew 26:26 Wall Art

Around the table by lamplight

This is not the long, one-sided table of the famous Milan fresco. Here the disciples crowd on low benches on every side of a plain wooden table, some turned toward us, some seen from behind, several wearing head cloths. Their robes are painted in muted greens, blues, rust and oatmeal. Jesus sits at the center in white with a red stole, holding up a round loaf in both hands while the others watch.

Small clay oil lamps burn on the table next to a jug, a cup and a bowl of bread, and another tall jar waits on the floor. Through a square window in the stone wall we glimpse a town at night under a deep blue sky, with a lone cypress and a couple of lit windows. Above the scene: “Take, eat; this is my body”, and Matthew 26:26.

What happened at the Last Supper?

Matthew places the meal on the evening Passover began, in a borrowed room in Jerusalem. In the King James Version the full verse reads: “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.” Four verbs, took, blessed, broke and gave, follow each other in order, and the same four appear when Jesus fed the crowds earlier in the Gospel.

Passover remembered the night Israel left Egypt, when a lamb was eaten and its blood marked the doors. By speaking over the bread and then the cup in the middle of that remembrance, Jesus gives the old feast a new center: his own death, which would come the following afternoon. Just before, he has told the Twelve that one of them will betray him, so the words are spoken in a room already heavy with what is coming.

Diners at a festive meal in that period usually reclined on cushions rather than sitting upright, which is why John's Gospel speaks of a disciple leaning against Jesus. Painters have always adapted the setting to their own world; this version keeps the benches, the lamps and the clay dishes of a simple village house.

Holy Thursday and First Communion

The Last Supper is remembered on Holy Thursday, when many churches celebrate an evening Mass or communion service, and some families hang this print for the length of Holy Week. Because it shows the first Eucharist, it is also a natural choice for a child's First Communion, and it looks at home above a dining table where a family shares its own evening meals.