Jeremy Barker at Popped Culture assembled more than 30 versions of contemporary recastings of DaVinci’s painting of “The Last Supper.” There’s the Simpsons version, the cartoon version with Disney and Warner Bros. characters. There’s the Sopranos version, and the Battlestar Galactica version.
For example, the Robert Altman version, from M*A*S*H:
If you need a 20 minute lesson on the influence of Renaissance art on contemporary art, this is one many high school kids may find interesting, if not amazingly historically informative. I suspect there is a great lesson plan hiding in there about 20th century history as reflected in parody art.
It’s a brilliant and subtle demonstration of the power of DaVinci’s art that there are so many copy cat pictures, don’t you think?
I did notice, however, that Barker left out the Mel Brooks version, from “History of the World, Part I.” It may not fit the meme.
Resources:
- LastSuppers, a blog dedicated to parodies of DaVinci’s painting
- ABC News story, featuring the painting
- Malaspina site, with DaVinci’s painting before restoration, and a lot of other art — a good tour of Renaissance art all by itself.
- More on the painting, from another blog
- Wikipedia entry — notice especially Tintorretto’s version
- Wikipedia on DaVinci
- Museum of Science (Boston) exhibit on DaVinci
- Wikimedia Commons version of DaVinci’s work
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
[…] Our congregation will stage a “living” Last Supper a la da Vinci, which got me to thinking about the painting, which reminded me of this post from years ago; some minor updating, and I’ve added a new version I found from ABC’s series, “Lost,” which was in the middle of its run when I posted this originally in 2008: […]
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