The last supper...a little known tale

I’m a self confessed Paulo Coelho fan. I’ve read almost all of his books, and I wince at the criticism that most cynical readers throw at him. I think they make sense, because he does a fantastic job at blending the spiritual and higher aspects of life with the everyday stuff. And, master of words that he is, he does it with a bit of magic.

For all those uninitiated into the world of books, Paulo Coelho is the author of the Alchemist, the book that changed the lives of many people, including the likes of Will Smith and me, and though his other books have never come close to that sort of popularity, they’re intriguing to say the least. Those who haven’t read them, go do it now.

Anyway, there’s this fable in one of his lesser known books ‘The Devil and Miss Prym’, a story which deals with the millennia old fight of Good versus Bad. I really don’t know if its true or not, but I’ve never forgotten it, though its been like three years since I read that book. It goes like this…

Centuries ago, in the age of the renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci had just conceived the idea of painting the Last Supper, a painting which shows Jesus Christ having supper with his apostles, and the painting is special because it shows Jesus, the embodiment of good, and Judas, the doer of evil (because he was the one who betrayed Jesus) in the same painting, along with the other devotees. Da Vinci had his own style of going about his paintings, and it was to seat a live subject in front of him and paint. But this style of painting often required him to go on long ‘subject hunts’. It was on one such long and arduous subject hunt that he discovered a cherubic looking church choir youth, whose face had an angelic look to it. “You’re the man for my painting” said Da Vinci. He invited the youth to his studio, and the face of that youth became the face of Jesus in that immortal painting. So the painting was half done, and Da vinci now wanted someone to paint with as Judas. He searched far and wide, but he could never see evil and avarice manifest themselves so clearly on one face, and he had all but given up hope.

He had almost given up, when he discovered by the roadside one day, a drunk drug addict lying unconscious. His face had all the world’s sinister darkness on it, and he was the quintessential dissipated evil man. He dragged him into his studio, and immortalized the features of that wasted man as the face of Judas in the painting. A few hours later, the man came to his senses, and when he saw what Da Vinci was painting, he said “Hey I’ve seen that painting before!” Da Vinci was perplexed…had some painter stolen his ideas? “Where, Where?” he shook him by the shoulders.

“A few years ago, before I lost the singing job at the church choir, a painter…was it you? Called me as a model for Jesus Christ in this painting. My memory is lulled by my intoxications now, but I believed the painter was you, and this was the very same painting.”

Moral of the story: There’s no good, there’s no bad. You’re both, and both are in you.