The recent controversy at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kerala demonstrates exactly why Leonardo's Last Supper remains so powerful 500+ years later, and why reinterpretations can be so explosive.
THE LAST SUPPER
It's Passover in Jerusalem, around 30-33 AD Jesus and his twelve apostles gather in a room to observe the annual feast commemorating Israel's liberation from Egyptian slavery. They recline around a table laden with symbolic foods: unleavened bread, bitter herbs, wine, and likely lamb, each element pointing back to that night of deliverance centuries before when God (or the angel of death, depending on the interpretation) “passed over” marked with lamb's blood (the sign of obedience and faith, marking those under God's protection).
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But this Passover will be different. Jesus knows he'll be arrested within hours and executed within days.
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