At the conclusion of James Tissot’s Life of Our Savior Jesus Christ tour of North American cities in the spring of 1899, it had become the world’s most celebrated ensemble of visual art. In Chicago, 23,000 people came on a single day to view the exhibition’s 500 paintings and drawings. Special excursion trains were scheduled for attendees; in Brooklyn – which purchased the series by public subscription in 1900 – local boosters claimed that permanent exhibition of Tissot’s work would lead to an increase in real estate values. Along with full–page ads for its new three–volume edition of Tissot’s complete paintings and accompanying explanatory text, McClure’s speaker bureau offered journalist Cleveland Moffett’s lantern slide lecture on the work. Tissot had earned $100,000 dollars in admission fees from the American tour, and a million francs selling the reproduction rights to Paris publisher Mame. As it had in Paris, London, Montreal, Chicago, and Manhattan, The Life of Christ exhibition in New York led to a lively debate about the authenticity and accuracy of Tissot’s naturalistic images of scenes whose principal historic sources were the Gospels.
Declaring his independence from the hazy representations of the past, Tissot himself had singled out Leonardo’s masterpiece as a yardstick against which to measure his own artistic aims:
When Leonardo painted the Last Supper at Santa–Maria–Grazie at Milan, he doubtless painted the truth; but only moral truth as interpreted by him, not actual historic truth. . . it was far better to confine myself to the truth as far as that truth is accessible. . .
What did Tissot intend by “actual historic truth,” and how was this accessible to him? Mark, Matthew and Luke’s Gospels say no more than that Jesus took his place with the twelve; The Gospel of St. John says nothing at all. Yet Tissot pictured a very definite arrangement of the Apostles around their Master, one strikingly different from Leonardo’s, which, as early as the mid-16th century, had been identified thanks to a labeled copy of the fresco. None of Tissot’s critics ever attempted to decipher his depiction, though it is a simple task, given that he also painted individual portraits for each of the twelve. Clockwise from Jesus’s left, Tissot portrayed: Peter, Andrew, Judas Thaddeus, Simon, Matthew (Levi), Philip, Judas Iscariot, Thomas, Nathanael (Bartholomew), James the Younger, James the Older, and John. He maintains this same order in The Washing of the Feet, the next painting in the series, and highlights the order in the accompanying text:
the Apostles were seated in the same order as before . . . on the left, at the edge of the table, is Judas, succeeded by Saint Thomas, Saint Bartholomew, Saint James the Less, who is bringing the water, Saint James the Greater, and then Saint John, who is looking down at the basin in which the feet are to be washed. . . [on Jesus’s left are] Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint Thaddeus, Saint Simon, Saint Matthew, and Saint Philip.
To underscore the importance of the arrangement, Tissot declares that this order marks the founding of “the Christian hierarchy.”
As with dozens of details in The Life of Christ’s 365 paintings, Tissot drew this arrangement directly from Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich’s The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1839):
The table was narrow, and about half a foot higher than the knees of a man; in shape it resembled a horseshoe, and opposite Jesus, in the inner part of the half–circle, there was a space left vacant, that the attendants might be able to set down the dishes. As far as I can remember, John, James the Greater, and James the Less sat on the right hand of Jesus; after them Bartholomew, and then, round the corner, Thomas and Judas Iscariot. Peter, Andrew, and Thaddeus sat on the left of Jesus; next came Simon, and then (round the corner) Matthew and Philip.
On Maundy Thursday in 1821, as Sister Emmerich was describing her vision to her amanuensis Clemens Brentano, he made a simple sketch of the arrangement:
The paintings both preceding and following Tissot’s Lord’s Supper followed Sister Emmerich’s description even more exactly.
For The Jews’ Passover, Tissot’s text – which fully summarizes his painting’s scene – reads:
The draperies, decorated with festoons of foliage, hang as usual between the pillars; the lamp is lit, for it is already night. The twelve Apostles, with Christ in the middle of them, are beginning the ceremonial of the feast in accordance with the ancient ritual: with robes tucked up, loins girt, sandals on the feet and the staff in the hand, in a word, in travelling dress in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. . .
Compare Sister Emmerich’s Dolorous Passion:
The disciples put on traveling dresses which were in the vestibule, different shoes, a white robe resembling a shirt, a cloak. . . and they girded up their clothes around the waist. . . They held staves in their hands, and went two and two to the table, each in his own place, with the stave resting on his arms, and his hands upraised.
Tissot’s explanation accompanying The Washing of the Feet details the elements of the painting: the Apostles are seated in the same order as before and Philip is putting on his sandals, having been the first to receive the foot–washing. Sister Emmerich describes the seats in a half circle, James the Less bringing “a leathern bottle of water,” the large empty basin at the center before Christ, and how the Apostles “observed the same order as at table.”
Both in his exhibition and in the printed work, Tissot bookended these opening scenes of Christ’s Passion with architecturally and topographically precise sketches of Jerusalem – the fruit of his three pilgrimages to the Holy Land in 1886, 1889 and 1896 – that reinforced the artist’s claims to historical truth. For the scenes of the Passion, Tissot drew upon an entirely different technique of vision:
. . . when I realized that my eyes were reflecting the very landscape upon which He had gazed, I felt that a certain receptivity was induced in my mind which so intensified my powers of intuition, that the scenes of the past rose up before my mental vision in a peculiar and striking manner. . . Is not the artist, indeed, a kind of sensitive plant, the activity of which, when concentrated to a certain point, is intensified, and through a kind of hyperaesthesia, is powerfully affected by contact with objects outside itself; this contact producing vivid images on the brain?
Though Tissot attributed this process of divination to his physical contact with the historic landscapes where the Passion took place, Sister Emmerich’s descriptions were just as essential to his artistic process; Tissot mentions her as a source for: a section on Saint Veronica, whom she refers to as Seraphia; Magdalene; an incident of Jesus on the bridge over the Kidron Brook; and the final steps to the Cross.
Contemporary painters of the Last Supper looking for historical veracity have another visionary source upon which to draw. Of all the astonishing architectonic details that fill Judith von Halle’s 2006 book Das Abendmahl : vom vorchristlichen Kultus zur Transsubstantiation (The Last Supper: From Pre-Christian Cult to Transubstantiation), her sketch and description of the seating arrangement is simultaneously the most humble and most arresting, as it matches exactly the order reported by Anne Catherine Emmerich:
For Judith the key to the seating arrangement is the central triangle that it sets up:
As surely as both Anne Catherine Emmerich’s talents as a seamstress are reflected in her elaborate descriptions of the costumes worn by the people in her visions, Judith’s training as an architect combined with her extraordinary clairvoyance makes her uniquely capable of both recording and penetrating the mystery dimension of the Last Supper’s “geometry”:
An occult triangle formed between these three, rising from the sensory world and standing in the spiritual space. Midway between John and [Simon] Peter, but standing behind them, the shining shape of the divine hierophant appeared opposite Judas, the lower point of the triangle. The appearance of this triangle resembled three priests standing together who were going to celebrate mass or the feast of sacrifices. These three disciples were allowed to drink the blood of the Lord from the chalice, and Christ was their initiator. Judas stood in the triangle because through him the sacrifice of the Lord had to come about. He stood in the tip of the inverted, downward-pointing triangle. Destiny focused everything through the personality of Judas, as through the eye of a needle. The person aware of spiritual science sees the necessity of the reversal of that occult triangle, the point of which at that time turned away from the Lord. However, this reversal can only be achieved by descending to the lowest point and by going through the eye of the needle. The Savior voluntarily accepted the chalice given to him by his Father on the night of the Mount of Olives. Only through the sacrifice of the last forces, by relinquishing all power and revealing the innocent powerlessness, could the salvation of humanity be indelibly induced into the progress of the world. But that the salvation of mankind was omnipresent, also in the hour of the coming betrayal, was expressed by the fact that Judas, who took a sip from the cup, had thereby also taken the body of the Lord; for a small piece of his bread had fallen into the blood that he took.
In both Anne Catherine’s and Judith’s vision, Judas did not receive the bread from Christ; only Judith seems to note this “second chance,” where Judas does receive the Lord’s transubstantial body. This is the penultimate moment before the Turning Point of Time, and every single gesture, every single breath shimmers with eternal import:
That the salvation of mankind was omnipresent, even in the hour of the approaching betrayal, was expressed in the fact that Judas, who took a sip from the goblet, also brought the body of the Lord to himself - for a chunk of His body/bread had entered the blood/wine that he was consuming.
The Last Supper barely appears in Estelle Isaacson’s visions of the Passion, perhaps because Magdalene was not present. Still, she touches upon a remarkable mystery that is absent from both Judith’s and Anne Catherine’s visions:
I saw Jesus offer Judas the sop, the wine-soaked bread. I wept again, for I knew Jesus was in this way allowing Judas to betray him.
Curiously, Judas was offered an even greater portion of that sacrament than the others present at the Last Supper. He received the wine-soaked bread as an emblem of the mystery of the redemption of fallen humanity. Several mysteries indwell this act, and in their time these will come forward. Only a part can be given now.
Thanks Colleen, Cynthia, and Natalia for reading. I so hope that Anne Catherine, Estelle, and Judith can feel our appreciation for these truly eternal gifts they have given us all.
Thank you Kevin.