Olympic ‘Last Supper’ scene was in fact based on painting of Greek gods, say art experts

A controversial tableau in the Olympics opening ceremony denounced by Christian and conservative critics as an offensive parody of The Last Supper was in fact inspired by a 17th-century Dutch painting of the Greek Olympian gods, art historians have said.

“Does this painting remind you of something?” the Magnin Museum in the French city of Dijon asked (with a wink) on X, inviting people to “come and admire” The Feast of the Gods, painted by the artist Jan van Bijlert between 1635 and 1640.

The Paris 2024 organising committee on Sunday apologised to Catholics and other Christian groups if they had been offended by the scene, which featured drag queens, a transgender model and a semi-naked singer sitting in a fruit bowl.

French bishops regretted the “excesses and provocation” of the tableau, which they said amounted to “a mockery of Christianity”. Far-right French politicians and conservative Christians in the US and elsewhere have been more vituperative.

Leonardo da Vinci’s much-parodied The Last Supper portrays the final meal Jesus is said to have taken with his apostles. However, the creative director of the opening ceremony, Thomas Jolly, denied the scene, titled “Festivity”, was based on the painting.

“That wasn’t my inspiration,” he told BFM TV. “I think it was pretty clear. There’s Dionysus who arrives at the table … Why is he there? Because he’s the god of feasting, of wine, and the father of Sequana, the goddess of the River Seine.”

In Friday’s ceremony, which was watched by 23 million people in France and, according to a Harris poll, rated a success by 86%, Dionysus was played by the singer-songwriter Philippe Katerine. Sequana was in a later scene embodied by Floriane Issert, a non-commissioned officer in the Gendarmerie nationale, riding a metal horse along the river.

The idea, Jolly said, was “more to have a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus, Olympian, Olympianism … You’ll never find in me any kind of wish to mock, to denigrate anything at all. I wanted a ceremony that repairs and reconciles.”

Jolly did not name the painting that inspired the tableau, but art historians in France and the Netherlands have pointed to van Bijlert’s work, a portrayal of the ancient Greek deities gathered for a feast on Mount Olympus.

The Dutch art historian Walther Schoonenberg was in no doubt. “The tableau vivant or ‘living painting’ in the opening ceremony of Paris 2024 was of The Feast of the Gods, by Jan van Bijlert from 1635,” Schoonenberg said on X.

Apollo, god of the sun, was recognisable by his halo, Schoonenberg said, Dionysus by the grapes, Poseidon, god of the sea, by his trident, Artemis by the moon and Venus by Cupid. Minerva, goddess of wisdom, and Mars, god of war, were also present.

“So there is no question in this tableau of an insult to Christians,” the historian said. “We’re talking about the Olympic gods in a representation of van Bijlert’s work. The Greek gods came together on Olympus – where the ancient Games took place.”

The Magnin Museum did, however, acknowledge similarities between the work and The Last Supper, which was painted more than a century earlier before the Protestant Reformation, which rejected Catholic art and even destroyed many works.

That may go some way to explaining the confusion. “In the context of the Reformation … the artist found a strategy for painting a Christ-related Last Supper under cover of a mythological subject matter,” the museum said.

Katerine told Le Parisien newspaper he was “proud of the performance”, adding that nudity was “really the very origin of the Games” and that he had been “very happy” to be a part of the ceremony.

Hugo Bardin, whose drag queen character Paloma took part in the tableau, was disappointed Paris 2024 had apologised. “An apology means recognising a mistake, recognising you deliberately did something to harm, which was not the case,” he said.