In a change worthy of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, The Last Supper is turning into a meal that just will not end.  As one of the most famous scenes in the New Testament of the Bible, the last meal of Jesus and his disciples is common fodder for artists from every style and generation.  It also makes for easy comparison across generations.  As it turns out, the food and portion sizes keep getting larger.

Between the 1000 AD version of The Last Supper and 1900 AD version of The Last Supper, the size of the main meal grew by 69% and the size of the plates grew by 66%.  The size of the loaves of bread alone grew by 25%!  This, according to Brian and Craig Wansink, lead researchers of the Cornell University study, is the painting updating to modern portion sizes.  “There is no religious reason why the meals got bigger. It may be that meals really did grow, or that people just became more interested in food.”

Fortunately, the people in the painting didn’t get much larger.

Tags: The Last Supper, food in The Last Supper keeps getting bigger, revisions, restoration, famous art, nutritional information, unusual art, Brian Wansink, Craig Wansink, Cornell University, Leonardo Da Vinci, El Greco, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens

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