A decade ago, when the book Da Vinci Code was released, national award winning artist Francis Kodankandath was all over the news for refuting the explanation that Dan Brown had given.
Also an Air Intelligence Officer at the International Airport Kozhikode, Kerala, Francis devoted 11 years studying Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. What got him curious was the absence of a chalice in the painting. With this point as a starter, he went on to argue about other interpretations by Brown including the presence of Mary Magdalene.
In the painting, Jesus wears red inside and blue outside, the figure beside him wears the opposite — red outside and blue inside. While Brown claims that the figure is Mary, a mirror image of Jesus — indicating a husband wife relationship — Francis says it is none other than the 16-year-old disciple St John, who has been mentioned in biblical scriptures to have been emulating Jesus, out of respect. “St John was Jesus’ mom’s first cousin’s son. He was young, this explains the absence of beard and moustache,” he says.
But what about the chalice? “Imagine you have a mirror place above Jesus’ head. Now, with his arms stretched wide, it would form an inverted triangle on the ceiling, with his finger tips touching the two ends of the ceiling. Twelve horizontal beams run across the two lines of the ‘V’ shape, denoting the 12 disciples. This V is the huge chalice,” he says.
Also, he points out that a disciple who is sitting to the left of Jesus has his fingers pointed towards the ceiling — clearly giving us the hint to where the mystery lay. The concept of chalice and bread which is discussed in all holy masses is depicted here. “The two Vs (taking the mirror image into account) form an X which stands for the unknown or god. And if you draw a circle with the centre point as Jesus’ head, you get a circle that refers to the bread. An X within a circle also represents the Vitruvian Man, another great work of the artist,” he says.
(An artwork by Francis also rests in IIT Madras)