Super sizing the Last Supper, or not.

Glenda bounced me a news article for a giggle about meal portion sizes growing over centuries as depicted in various depictions of The Last Supper. Anyone else see it?

Super Size Me: how the Last Supper became a banquet over 1,000 years

Art imitates life as scientists discover that size of portions in paintings of Jesus’s final meal grew over time

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Wednesday, 24 March 2010

It is the most famous meal in history and now scientists have found that the artistic renditions of the Last Supper over the past thousand years show that the size of the plates and the amount of food being eaten by Jesus Christ and his disciples have grown significantly over the centuries.

A study of dozens of paintings of the Last Supper from AD1,000 to the more recent past has found that the depiction of Christ’s final meeting with the 12 apostles suffered a type of “food inflation” normally associated with the supersized portions being served in modern-day, fast-food outlets.
More here

It did seem a little simplistic to me, but thankfully someone else has put the hard yards into the research needed to refute it. And give me a giggle at the same time.

To put it simply, this study is a load of crap. It’s a load of crap as big as your head. With my head, Jesus’s head, the apostles’ heads, and the Brothers Wansinks’ heads thrown in for good measure.
Rest here
To this end may I heartily recommend Got Medieval: A[n intermittently updated] tonic for the slipshod use of medieval European history in the media and pop culture.

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