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Supersizing the "Last Supper"
gandhi_2 writes "A pair of sibling scholars compared 52 artists' renditions of 'The Last Supper', and found that the size of the meal painted had grown through the years. Over the last millennium they found that entrees had increased by 70%, bread by 23%, and plate size by 65.6%. Their findings were published in the International Journal of Obesity. From the article: 'The apostles depicted during the Middle Ages appear to be the ascetics they are said to have been. But by 1498, when Leonardo da Vinci completed his masterpiece, the party was more lavishly fed. Almost a century later, the Mannerist painter Jacobo Tintoretto piled the food on the apostles' plates still higher.'"
In his portrait the fries are all supersized, when many historians note that apostles were much more likely to order from the dollar menu.
That article was worthless. It's about a series of paintings, and yet the only picture is of some athlete in the side column.
If this is the current standard of quality in newspapers, no wonder they're a dying breed.
tl;dr: relevant pics or gtfo!
are you implying he is not a specialist in a particular branch of study? Or are you just a dick.
I'll call Harvard and have them disband the entire English Literature department.
Everyone knows that the apostles ordered Filet o' Fish! C'mon!
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Historians were also both pleased and horrified by the recent unearthing of a rendition of the Last Supper by Michaelangelo. While the portion sizes are closer to what is believed to be accurate, the painting also features such embellishments as a kangaroo, twenty eight disciples, and three Christs.
However the card attached to the painting is actually labeled "The Penultimate Supper", and historians must admit there are no records of how many people attended that gathering.
The enemies of Democracy are
Not on friday.
THL phish sticks
...I wanted to give the impression of a real last supper. You know, not just any old last supper. Not like a last meal or a final snack. But you know, I wanted to give the impression of a real mother of a blow-out, you know?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
Using the size of the diners' heads as a basis for comparison, the Wansinks used computers to compare the sizes of the plates in front of the apostles, the food servings on those plates and the bread on the table.
Maybe people's heads have just been getting smaller? It would sure explain a lot.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
The last supper is thought to have been a Passover Sedar. This would mean, if possible, there would have been many kinds of foods, but not in large quantities.
Everyone has blinders (or sets of presuppositions) - to assume otherwise is ignoring reality. If I begin a project in web design, I have a certain set of presuppositions about how things go together - this on the basis of general consensus. If I begin a project involving history, I begin with a certain set of presuppositions (If I set out to do a project on what the food was at the Last Supper, I would generally have to have as a presupposition that the meal happened).
Being scholarly does not mean rejecting presupposition but rather working towards a greater understanding of a given topic while understanding the presuppositions upon which my research is based.
And if we really want to get down to it, the whole reason we have "scholarly" pursuits is because of the medieval "scholastics" who were almost uniformly religious in some respect.
However there ARE legitimate scholars who study the bible as a work of literature and history. Translations, interpretations, writing styles, geography, politics.
I see no reason to group the same people who paint Lev 18:22 on placards in the same group who simply treat the bible like Shakespeare's first folio.
It also depicts them as a bunch of white guys.
No, I’m not suggesting that Jesus was black. But he probably wasn’t white.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I see no reason to deny at least a subgroup of religiously motivated biblical scholars the "scholar" status. Anyone who doubts that should find a well-trained catholic theologian to discuss with. First, they do a lot of serious literary/language/history study, second, even within the realms of dogma, where you might question their axioms (as I do), they usually are well-trained in logic and able to deliver a hell of an argument. Not every religious scholar is a frothing at the mouth evangelical - that is pretty much an American phenomenon.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I only know a bit about the ancient greek habits - the strength was probably about the same as today, given that the winemaking techniques are not fundamentally different. It was, however, almost always watered down. There are different accounts on the amount of watering - during a symposion, one person, the symposiarch, was in duty of the watering. The mostly used ratio probably was 3 parts water on 2 parts wine. I think Plutarch discusses the matter in depth *somewhere*, but I'd have to dig deeper to find a quotation. Drinking the wine pure was often considered barbaric or even dangerous, apart from medical use.
The use for making the water safe is obvious, but there also was a huge culture surrounding wine, with ancient greek wine critics going into details just as the modern ones. It was also common to flavour the wines by adding honey, herbs or spices.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
This would have been their idea of a feast. The fact that an Italian interpretation 1500 years later doesn't "get it" is not surprising. The fact that a scholar of any sort 2000 years later fixates on it is somewhat absurd.
Substitute "last supper" with "thanksgiving" and you will have something resembling a proper cultural context. Then contemplate your comparisons.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Beginning early in the 2d Millennium, the Catholic Church started burning many true ascetics (e.g., the Cathars) as heretics. (They of course then expanded the powers of the Inquisition to include, well, anyone their twisted logic could rationalize to oppress.)
No doubt this led to a change in the way people perceived heroes from religious history. Da Vinci may never have even considered the idea that an apostle was an ascetic. The Inquisition was in full force, and in charge of most of the governments and virtually all of the churches of Europe, when he painted that picture.
But the Last Supper was on Thursday.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
for the complete transcript you can either read the next 72 posts (undoubtedly they will quote the entire skit) or you can look here:
http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/michelangelo.html
It would be an improvement.
-- Yale