Paris’s Olympic opening ceremony on July 26 was the cause of much online discussion. No moment more so, perhaps, than when several drag queens were shown seated at a long table.
Many viewers, including Pope Francis and Ayatollah Khamanei, interpreted the scene as a parody mocking Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper (c. 1495). By extension, they claimed that the opening ceremony mocked the Last Supper, the event Christians believe instituted the Eucharist celebration – and Christianity itself. The outrage has been so intense in some quarters that the ceremony organisers have been subject to death threats.
These responses fundamentally misinterpret the scene, which was not supposed to reference the Last Supper at all. The director of the ceremony, Thomas Jolly, was principally inspired not by da Vinci’s The Last Supper, but by Le Festin Des Dieux (The Feast of God, c. 1635-1640) a painting by Jan van Bijlert.
