Is that really mary magdaline next to jesus in the last supper?

[godsent]

In the last supper painting portrayed by da vinci,it seems as though mary magdaline is sat beside jesus!
If you ask me,that isn’t a women,somome told me it was john looking like a good looking young man!..but he looks kind of feminine!

Mary magdaline cant be sat next to him as in the bible it states all disciples were sat round the tabel at the time,if mary was sat there,a disciple would have had to been removed from the table and replaced with her!

Mary was there but i think she was cleaning the disciples boots at the door i think,im not 100% on that though…

Any thoughts on this issue!?

 

[RyanL]

Take a look at this image, and you tell me if Da Vinci thought John the Baptist was a woman…

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[StephanieC]

RyanL:

Take a look at this image, and you tell me if Da Vinci thought John the Baptist was a woman…

God Bless,
RyanL

Umm…different “John”…The last supper painting includes John, “the beloved disciple” of Jesus; John the Baptist was Elizabeth’s son, who “lept in the womb” at the Visitation of Mary.

 

[StephanieC]

godsent:

In the last supper painting portrayed by da vinci,it seems as though mary magdaline is sat beside jesus!
If you ask me,that isn’t a women,somome told me it was john looking like a good looking young man!..but he looks kind of feminine!

Mary magdaline cant be sat next to him as in the bible it states all disciples were sat round the tabel at the time,if mary was sat there,a disciple would have had to been removed from the table and replaced with her!

Mary was there but i think she was cleaning the disciples boots at the door i think,im not 100% on that though…

Any thoughts on this issue!?

No, it’s not Mary Magdalene. That’s Dan Brown & the Da Vinci Code trash fiction talkin’.

The disciple John was considered to be very young, younger than the other 11 disciples. In the Last Supper painting, that is one way that Leonardo da Vinci used to help the view distinguish between the 12. I’m no expert, but that’s some of what I’ve learned…

P.S…If you go to Catholic Answers homepage & do a search for “da vinci code” you’ll find some documents to help you de-bunk the hoo-hah around that painting & the novel.

 

[Hegesippus]

godsent:

In the last supper painting portrayed by da vinci,it seems as though mary magdaline is sat beside jesus!
If you ask me,that isn’t a women,somome told me it was john looking like a good looking young man!..but he looks kind of feminine!

Mary magdaline cant be sat next to him as in the bible it states all disciples were sat round the tabel at the time,if mary was sat there,a disciple would have had to been removed from the table and replaced with her!

Mary was there but i think she was cleaning the disciples boots at the door i think,im not 100% on that though…

Any thoughts on this issue!?

i dont think any women were at the last supper, because in another Gospel it clarifies that only the tweleve were present.

 

[Hegesippus]

StephanieC:

Umm…different “John”…The last supper painting includes John, “the beloved disciple” of Jesus; John the Baptist was Elizabeth’s son, who “lept in the womb” at the Visitation of Mary.

thats not the point that was trying to be made. He knew it was a different John, but he was trying to say since he portayed in a less masculine way is John the Baptist also a woman

 

[Zooey]

John the beloved disciple was very, very young at this time. He is painted as very young.
Furthermore, there was a painting convention that had the youngest person in a painting look like almost a child–very much what we today would consider “feminine”. Androgonous looking was the order of the day for the young. (In fact, boy children were often dressed as girls for several years after they were born. This continued up to the 19th century).

Dan Brown has used this to some effect. But that’s not Mary Magdalene; that’s the apostle John.

 

[misterX]

Ok heres the story on the da vinci painting as as taught to me in history.

John the bapstist is perdicted as a very young apostle, so he rarely portrayied with abeard etc. secondly da vinci used male models for all the apostles. ( in fact he used ordinary people he saw on the street, even homeless people). And recently they took x rays of the paintings and underneath each figure he wrote the name of the apostle. there was John under the painting of John the baptist.
One more thing i don’t understand about the davinci code (movie). And thats if the painting is really of mary magdaline, why would the Church spend millions of dollars, kill countless of people over the centuries, to keep a secret that could destroy their church, when a simple can of paint would do?
One more thing while i was reading the link i read this

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When Leonardo died< he left over 5,000 pages of notes and drawings. He writed(sic) his notes in a kind of inverted letter or secret maybe because he was protecting from the chuch because in that time, the renaissance was a period of full study. and the church still had lots of power

---

Now apart the fact that the writier of this doesn’t have a grasp on grammar, he/she doesn’t have a grasp on the renaisssance or indeed da vinci himself. while it is true that da vinci did write in a code, he also made deliberate mistakes in the drawings of his inventions. It isn’t true he did this to hide it from the chruch. The reason da vinci did this was because back then there were no copy right laws, and it was common for inventors (not only davinci) to make these slight mistakes on purpose as to protect their inventions. if anyone stole their ideas it wouldn’t work. but then again this person is a artist or art lover. And we all know how smart these people are. I mean his parents most likely spent many thousands of dollars sending this clown to university. And this pathetic excuse for a website is his crowing achiivement in his pointless life. O how proud his poor parents must be>

 

[dancus]

Zooey:

John the beloved disciple was very, very young at this time. He is painted as very young.
Furthermore, there was a painting convention that had the youngest person in a painting look like almost a child–very much what we today would consider “feminine”. Androgonous looking was the order of the day for the young. (In fact, boy children were often dressed as girls for several years after they were born. This continued up to the 19th century).

Dan Brown has used this to some effect. But that’s not Mary Magdalene; that’s the apostle John.

Congratulations, your exactly correct. Now as for the person who made the crack about Mary of Magdala, I fail to find humor at the expense of a Saint. Incidently person is not your name in my mind, but given the fact this is a family forum, I must bow to convention. Dan

 

[mlchance]

misterX:

Now apart the fact that the writier of this doesn’t have a grasp on grammar…

Given the large number of grammatical and spelling errors in your own post, you’re perhaps best advised to avoid this tactic.

As to the OP’s questions: Even if Da Vinci did mean for the person next to Jesus to be Mary Magdalen, so what? Last time I checked, Da Vinci’s paintings were neither the Magesterium nor primary source historical documents.

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[jpusateri]

StephanieC:

Umm…different “John”…The last supper painting includes John, “the beloved disciple” of Jesus; John the Baptist was Elizabeth’s son, who “lept in the womb” at the Visitation of Mary.

I think the point Ryan made is that when DaVinci paints young men, they kind of look feminine. His rhetorical question,

RyanL:

you tell me if Da Vinci thought John the Baptist was a woman…:

is well taken.

I laughed when I saw this painting, since NOBODY uses *this *DaVinci painting to dispute that John the Baptist was REALLY a woman!

Oops! Maybe Dan Brown will have his next idea for a book from Catholic Answers Forums!

 

[tee_eff_em]

If Da Vinci *had *depicted John the Baptist at the Last Supper, wouldn’t he have to have been placed as an entree? (ie a head on a platter)

And: Suppose Da Vinci did mean to depict Mary Magdalene in the painting – Why did he then leave out the Apostle John?

tee

 

[LSK]

godsent:

In the last supper painting portrayed by da vinci,it seems as though mary magdaline is sat beside jesus!
If you ask me,that isn’t a women,somome told me it was john looking like a good looking young man!..but he looks kind of feminine!

Mary magdaline cant be sat next to him as in the bible it states all disciples were sat round the tabel at the time,if mary was sat there,a disciple would have had to been removed from the table and replaced with her!

Mary was there but i think she was cleaning the disciples boots at the door i think,im not 100% on that though…

Any thoughts on this issue!?

St. John has always been artistically portrayed as very, very young. He was the youngest of the Apostles and lived the longest. What you are asking is one of the ‘theories’ put out by people who support modern Gnosticism and the idea that Mary Magdalene was an Apostle rather than a Disciple.

 

[VociMike]

StephanieC:

Umm…different “John”…The last supper painting includes John, “the beloved disciple” of Jesus; John the Baptist was Elizabeth’s son, who “lept in the womb” at the Visitation of Mary.

I gathered that his point was that DaVinci painted more than one biblical man in a very feminine way, so the portrayal of John in the Last Supper is not extraordinary or significant.

 

[VociMike]

misterX:

One more thing i don’t understand about the davinci code (movie). And thats if the painting is really of mary magdaline, why would the Church spend millions of dollars, kill countless of people over the centuries, to keep a secret that could destroy their church, when a simple can of paint would do?

Good point. One match and the whole problem disappears. Clearly the Church over the centuries didn’t find the painting a problem, or a revealing of any deep dark secrets.

 

[RyanL]

Thanks to those who answered the OP for me. That’s exactly the point I was trying to make - Da Vinci painted young men with an effeminate look. Not just young men, BTW, but some angels as well. Simply saying that “he looks feminine” and therefore Da Vinci meant to paint a woman is a rediculous postulate. You may also look at his sculpture of young David - again, more than a bit effeminate.

In retrospect, however, I should have made it a bit more clear that I was trying to draw that distinction.

God Bless,
RyanL

 

[Riley259]

godsent:

In the last supper painting portrayed by da vinci,it seems as though mary magdaline is sat beside jesus!
If you ask me,that isn’t a women,somome told me it was john looking like a good looking young man!..but he looks kind of feminine!

Mary magdaline cant be sat next to him as in the bible it states all disciples were sat round the tabel at the time,if mary was sat there,a disciple would have had to been removed from the table and replaced with her!

Mary was there but i think she was cleaning the disciples boots at the door i think,im not 100% on that though…

Any thoughts on this issue!?

The beloved disciple John is depicted as the one next to Jesus. Da Vinci always depicted young men in a somewhat feminized and androgenous way. Of course, that didn’t stop Dan Brown from trying to say that it was Mary Magdaline in his ridiculous book The Da Vinci Code. Read Olson and Meisel’s book The Da Vinci Hoax for a refutation of this claim - they devote a whole section to it.

 

[StephanieC]

RyanL:

Thanks to those who answered the OP for me. That’s exactly the point I was trying to make - Da Vinci painted young men with an effeminate look. Not just young men, BTW, but some angels as well. Simply saying that “he looks feminine” and therefore Da Vinci meant to paint a woman is a rediculous postulate. You may also look at his sculpture of young David - again, more than a bit effeminate.

In retrospect, however, I should have made it a bit more clear that I was trying to draw that distinction.

God Bless,
RyanL

Whoopsie! Looks like everybody else picked up on your original point but me. “Pay no attention to the poster behind this screen; you may now return to your originally scheduled thread…”

 

[tee_eff_em]

RyanL:

Thanks to those who answered the OP for me. That’s exactly the point I was trying to make - Da Vinci painted young men with an effeminate look. Not just young men, BTW, but some angels as well. Simply saying that “he looks feminine” and therefore Da Vinci meant to paint a woman is a rediculous postulate. You may also look at his sculpture of young David - again, more than a bit effeminate

Not to detract from your point but: Did Da Vinci sculpt a David? I know Michelangelo is famous for one (among many other accomplishments, naturally) – And which I’ve never thought of as effeminate, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

tee

 

[RyanL]

Oops. My bust (pun intended). I was looking at a sculpture of David by Andrea del Verrocchio, who taught Da Vinci. That’s what I get for not paying attention in art class…

God Bless,
RyanL********