188 GUIDE TO THE ACADEMY AT VENICE

Q. What picture is that which you have named?

A. It is the picture representing the last* supper that Jesus took with His disciples in the house of Simon.

Q. Where is this picture?

A. In the refectory of the Friars of SS. Giovanni and Paolo.

Q. Is it painted on the wall, on panel, or on cloth?

A. On cloth.

Q. How many feet is it in height?

A. It is about seventeen feet.

Q. How wide?

A. About thirty-nine feet.

Q. In this supper of our Lord have you painted any attendants?

A. Yes, my lord.

* “Cena ultima che,” etc.: the last, that is to say, of the two which Veronese supposed Christ to have taken with this host; but he had not carefully enough examined the apparently parallel passages. They are confusing enough, and perhaps the reader will be glad to refer to them in their proper order.

I. There is, first, the feast given to Christ by St. Matthew, after he was called; the circumstances of it told by himself; only saying “the house” instead of “my house” (Matt. ix. 9-13). This is the feast at which the objection is taken by the Pharisees-“Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” the event being again related by St. Luke (v. 29), giving Matthew the name of Levi. No other circumstance of interest takes place on this occasion.

II. “One of the Pharisees desired Him that He would eat with him: and He went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat” (Luke vii. 36).

To this feast came the Magdalen, and “stood at His feet, behind Him, weeping.” And you know the rest. The same lesson given to the Pharisees who forbade the feast of Matthew, here given-in how much more pathetic force-to the Pharisee at whose feast Jesus now sat. Another manner of sinner this, who stands uncalled, at the feast, weeping; who in a little while will stand weeping-not for herself. The name of the Pharisee host is given in Christ’s grave address to him-“Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee” [Luke vii. 40].

III. The supper at Bethany, in the house of Simon “the Leper,” where Lazarus sat at table, where Martha served, and where her sister Mary poured the ointment on Christ’s head, “for my burial” (Mark xiv. 3; Matt. xxvi. 7; and John xii. 2, where in the following third verse doubtless some copyist, confusing her with the Magdalen, added the clause of her wiping His feet with her hair;-so also, more palpably, in John xi. 2). Here the objection is made by Judas, and the lesson given-“The poor ye have always with you.”

We cannot seriously suppose Simon the Leper to be the same person as Simon the Pharisee; still less Simon the Pharisee to be the same as Matthew the publican: but in Veronese’s mind their three feasts had got confused, and he thinks of them as two only, and calls this which he represents here the last of the two, though there is nothing whatever to identify it as first, last, or middle. There is no Magdalen, no Mary, no Lazarus, no hospitable Levi, no supercilious Simon. Nothing but a confused meeting of very mixed company; half of them straggling about the table without sitting down; and the conspicuous brown dog, for whom the Inquisitors would have had him substitute the Magdalen;-which if he had done, the picture would have been right in all other particulars, the scarlet-robed figure opposite Christ then becoming Simon the Pharisee; but he cannot be Matthew the apostle, for Veronese distinctly names the twelve apostles after “the master of the house”; and the text written on the balustrade on the left is therefore either spurious altogether, or added by Veronese to get rid of the necessity of putting in a Magdalen to satisfy his examiners, or please the Prior of St. John and Paul.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]