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Ricci's Last Supper
At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, there is a painting of the Last Supper by Sebastiano Ricci, an early 18th Century Venetian artist. In the painting, he shows what we typically expect from the subject – there’s Jesus with an unearthly glow emanating from His hair; there are the Disciples sitting there at the table looking at the same time holy and confused; there’s Judas waiting for his moment to leave.
Ricci also chooses to elaborate on the text; there’s a woman carrying laundry over on the far left of the scene; there are angels watching from on high; there is even – and this is my favorite part – a dog licking a plate in the foreground.
Why a dog? Why not a rooster? Why not a donkey?
I don’t know this for sure but I think Ricci was thinking back to Matthew 15. In that chapter, Jesus commends the faith of a Canaanite woman who pleads with Him to heal her daughter. She wants just a bit of the crumbs from the master's table.
One of the key points of the Gospels, especially Matthew, is how Jesus came to God’s lost sheep – Israel – and His own people rejected Him. Instead, the message of redemption went to the Gentile dogs. We – and I’m speaking for most of us reading this – weren’t God’s lost sheep; we were the wild dogs that preyed upon the sheep.
I don’t know this for sure but I think Ricci put the dog in the painting of the Last Supper to represent himself and all of us. There we are. We’re not left out.
The mercy of God overflows even to us.
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