Dali's Last Supper (1955) is as different from Da Vinci's (1495-1498) as one might get, considering they representational paintings of an event that nobody actually describes in any great detail.
According to the biblical account of the supper, there was Jesus and the 12 (Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code makes a case for 13) and bread and wine in the upper room of a residence of a good man whom Jesus may or may not have known personally, but who gave the room to the Teacher when Jesus asked for it.
All four gospels tell of the meal, with Matthew, Mark and Luke being similar in setting it at Passover, and John's departing from that chronology and the events that took place. Still, a supper begins the weekend that is central to Christian beliefs.
Even though the Last Supper has been a common element in Christian worship for millennia, sects vary in how they conduct it. Some set it at the center of weekly worship, some observe it once a month, some teach the literal changing of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, while others hold that it is only figurative. Some don't practice communion at all.
Not all church historians and theologians agree that the Last Supper actually took place, but maybe that doesn't matter.
Both Dali (1904-1989) and Da Vinci (1452-1519) were born into Catholic families, reared in that tradition, but began to explore different aspects of the religion later, moving beyond conventional understandings of faith and worship into mysticism and other esoteric beliefs.
Da Vinci's rendering, which is in Milan, is one of about a dozen painted during a time when the Church was commissioning such art as part of its mission of taking the good news to masses, most of whom could not read.
And, if I had to guess, I would say Dali's painting, which hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is a depiction of the Last Supper as an abstraction about humanity and divinity and sacrifice.
And that's what Easter is all about, right?
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