ABC News: Last Supper growing by Biblical proportions
The question of how the Last Supper would look if it were painted according to today's appetites has been answered by two academics in the US.
They analysed 52 of the most famous paintings of the Last Supper painted between the years 1000 and 2000 and found that the portions of food placed before Jesus and his disciples grew markedly. ...
... Over 1,000 years, the size of the main dish progressively grew by 69.2 per cent, plate size by 65.6 per cent and bread size by 23.1 per cent.
The growing size reflects the success of agriculture over the past 10 centuries, say the researchers.
"The last 1,000 years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food," said Brian Wansink, a professor of marketing and applied economics at Cornell University in New York.
"We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history's most famous dinner." ...
