by Martina Pugliesi
L’Ultima Cena undoubtedly represents one of the fundamental moments of Christianity, enriched by a double significance: Jesus Christ announcing Judas’ betrayal and, through the act of breaking bread and sharing wine with the disciples, establishing the Eucharist. The episode is recounted in both the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. 26:20-30; Mark 14:17-26; Luke 22:14-39) and John (13.1-20).
The challenge for artists over the centuries has been to try to depict the drama of the moment in the faces of the protagonists on the one hand, and the solemnity of the birth of the sacrament central to the Catholic religion on the other.
In the miniature shown here (Ms 2020, c38r), the characters sit at a round table, which, however, in order to give a sense of greater depth and to be able to depict each character in a consonant manner, takes on an almost triangular shape. It is a bare table: set with a simple white tablecloth, there are no dishes or utensils. In the center is placed the bread, the only element present, tending to emphasize the gravity of the act being depicted.
The moment depicted is indeed that of the Eucharist, culminating in the figure of Jesus Christ, placed naturally in the center of the scene below a canopy, in the act of handing the bread to Peter, seated to his right, as he clasps the chalice in his left hand. The disciples, arranged in groups of three, sit on benches and stools. On the opposite side of the table from Jesus, as per tradition, is seated Judas, recognizable by the absence of the nimbus and the bag of thirty denarii that he clutches with his right hand under the table, as if to conceal his own unfaithfulness. The figure of the traitor is also highlighted by the color of his robes, which emerges preponderantly over those of the other diners.
To his right can then be glimpsed Thomas raising a finger questioningly, the same finger he will later want to stick, because of his unbelief, into the wound of Jesus Christ after his Resurrection.
The entire page is set within a frame decorated with numerous flowers on which insects sometimes rest: a caterpillar in the upper margin, a butterfly in the lower, symbolizing transformation and rebirth.
The miniature is contained in ms. 2020, an Evangelarium also known as the Valois Codex because of its provenance. The manuscript was in fact executed around the first quarter of the 1500s probably for François de Valois-Angoulême (1518-1536), Dauphin of France and son of King François I (1494-1547).
Rather small in size (222×151 mm), the codex, membranaceous, is penned in antiqua round script by a single hand and features a 19th-century binding by the celebrated Aristide Staderini, known for introducing the movable card catalog in libraries.
Much debated has been the decoration of the codex, but in recent years scholars are more inclined to attribute the miniature to the skilful hands of Maître de Claude de France, active in Tours precisely in the 16th century.