Europeans' propensity for overeating immortalized by medieval artists

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

For two thousand years, gluttony was considered a very serious sin. However, this did not save humanity from the problem of obesity, which is now faced in many developed countries. According to scientists, the tendency to overeating in Europeans is in the blood, as evidenced by the results of the study of numerous masterpieces of painting.

Experts analyzed 52 paintings "The Last Supper", painted in the period from 1000 to 1750 AD. They found that during this time, the serving size on the linens increased by 69 percent and the size of the plates increased by 66 percent. According to the authors of the work, this trend indicates a constant increase in the amount of food consumed by representatives of Western civilization.

The Last Supper is the last evening meal of Christ with the disciples on the eve of the execution. According to legend, ten of the apostles who were present that day at the Last Supper were later martyred. She was one of the favorite subjects of artists of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In addition to da Vinci's work, such famous artists as Tintoretto, Peter Rubens, Nicolas Pusssen and many others wrote pictures on this topic.

It is not specified whether scientists considered other possible explanations for the unusual fact. One of them could be, for example, the desire of the authors of the paintings to emphasize the abundance that reigned on earth at the time of Christ.

However, this is not the first study based on paintings depicting the last meal of Christ, notes Rosbalt.ru. So, recently the results of the work of the Italian researcher Sforza Galicia were published. She stated that the great artist Leonardo da Vinci encrypted the date of the end of the world in his "Last Supper".

According to Galicia, da Vinci believed that Armageddon would begin on March 21, 4006 with a worldwide flood and end on November 1 of the same year, after which a "new era" would begin for humanity.