Arguably the most famous depiction of the Last Supper ever created is somewhat anomalous for enthusiasts of the Holy Grail. The Last Supper, which was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the mid-to-late 1490s and which is housed in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, does not actually include a grail, chalice or goblet or any kind.
Here Jesus and the Apostles are depicted as sitting in a line along a long table with bread and other food lying on the table in front of them. But there is no Holy Grail and no wine in evidence anywhere. This has confounded art historians and critics for centuries and has led to myriad theories as to why da Vinci chose not to include a grail or cup in his painting. The most famous recent explanation is outlined in Dan Brown’s best-selling Da Vinci Code in which it is suggested that the Grail was meant to be symbolic of Jesus having had children and a direct bloodline.
It is an indication of the ubiquity of the belief that Jesus drank wine from a cup of some sort at the Passover celebration with the Apostles shortly before his death and crucifixion that da Vinci’s omission of it has caused such deliberation.[16]
[1] Kevin J. Harty (ed.), The Holy Grail on Film: Essays on the Cinematic Quest (Jefferson, North Carolina, 2015).
[2] Colin Humphreys, The Mystery of the Last Supper (Cambridge, 2011); Daniel Scavone, ‘Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, and the Edessa Icon’, in Arthuriana, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 1–31.
[3] Juliette Wood, The Holy Grail: History and Legend (Cardiff, 2012).
[4] Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, the Story of the Grail, translated by Nigel Bryant (Cambridge, 1996); Jean Frapper, Chrétien de Troyes: The Man and his Work (Athens, Ohio, 1982).
[5] Robert de Boron, Joseph of Arimathea: A Romance of the Grail, translated by Jean Rogers (London, 1990).
[6] https://www.vivino.com/wine-news/searching-for-the-wine-from-the-last-supper [accessed 21/12/22]; Emlyn K. Dodd, Roman and Late Antique Wine Production in the Eastern Mediterranean (Oxford, 2020).
[7] https://www.albawaba.com/editorchoice/israel-wine-holy-grail-536755 [accessed 21/12/22]; Adam Montefiore, ‘Wine Talk: Grape Expectations’, The Jerusalem Post, 29 March 2016; Jo Ann H. Seeley, ‘The Fruit of the Vine: Wine at Masada and in the New Testament’, in Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3: Masada and the World of the New Testament (1996–7), pp. 207–227.
[8] https://www.vivino.com/wine-news/searching-for-the-wine-from-the-last-supper [accessed 21/12/22]; Jonathan D. Sarna, ‘Passover Raisin Wine, the American Temperance Movement and Mordecai Noah’, in Hebrew Union College Annual, Vol. 59 (1988), pp. 269–288.
[9] https://www.foodandwine.com/wine/red-wine/amarone-wine-guide [accessed 22/12/22].
[10] https://www.thespruceeats.com/traditional-passover-seder-foods-1807638 [accessed 22/12/22]; Judy Zeidler, ‘The feast of unleavened bread: Tradition! Doing it the wrong way’, The LA Times, 4 April 1993.
[11] Jack Wasserman, ‘Reflections on the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci’, in Arte Lombarda, No 66 (1983), pp. 15–34.
[12] Angelica Frey, ‘T.S. Eliot and the Holy Grail’, JSTOR Daily, 1 June 2022.
[13] https://www.history.com/news/is-the-quest-for-the-holy-grail-over [accessed 16/12/22].
[14] Morand Wirth, Don Bosco and the Salesians (New Rochelle, New York, 1982); Rich Tenorio, ‘An intoxicating journey uncorks Holy Land’s 5,000-year old history of wine making’, The Times of Israel, 28 July 2018; https://merip.org/2022/05/indigenous-wine-and-settler-colonialism-in-israel-and-palestine/ [accessed 15/12/22]; Judi Rudoren, ‘Israel aims to recreate wine that Jesus and King David drank’, The New York Times, 1 December 2015.
[15] ‘Israel’, in Jancis Robinson, The Oxford Companion to Wine (Third Edition, Oxford, 2006); https://www.frw.co.uk/editorial/people/the-wines-of-lebanon [accessed 16/12/22]; Morris Jastrow, Jnr., ‘Wine in the Pentateuchal Codes’, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 33 (1913), pp. 180–192; Asaph Goor, ‘The History of the Grape-Vine in the Holy Land’, in Economic Botany, Vol. 20, No. 1 (January–March, 1966), pp. 46–64.
[16] Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York, 2003); Ross King, Leonardo and the Last Supper (New York, 2012).
