The organizers behind the Paris Olympics apologized to anyone who was offended by a tableau that evoked Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” during Friday’s opening ceremony and provoked outrage by religious conservatives around the world. The organizers, however, defended the concept behind it.
Da Vinci’s painting depicts the moment when Jesus Christ declared that an apostle would betray him. The scene during Friday’s ceremony on the Debilly Bridge featured DJ and producer Barbara Butch — an LGBTQ+ icon who calls herself a “love activist.” Butch was wearing a silver headdress that looked like a halo as she got the party going on a footbridge across the Seine. Drag artists, dancers and others flanked Butch on both sides.
the specific part of the ceremony that caused the offense was, in fact, a scene depicting Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.
It was reportedly based on The Feast of the Gods, a 17th century painting by Dutch artist Jan Harmensz van Biljert that hangs in the Magnin Museum, in Dijon, eastern France.
The painting depicts an assembly of Greek gods on Mount Olympus for a banquet to celebrate the marriage of Thetis and Peleus. The figure seated at the table in the center has a halo of light behind his head.
Thomas Jolly, the opening ceremony director, insisted in an interview with France’s BFMTV that “The Last Supper” was not the inspiration behind the scene, explaining that “Dionysus arrives at the table because he is the Greek God of celebration,” adding that the particular sequence was entitled “festivity.”
“The idea was to create a big pagan party in link with the God of Mount Olympus — and you will never find in me, or in my work, any desire of mocking anyone,” Jolly said.