Maundy Thursday

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day when, in commemoration of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples before the Last Supper, our monarchs used to wash the feet of the poor – a practice that was sadly discontinued early in the eighteenth century, replaced by the doling out of specially minted coinage to a selection of deserving recipients. The image above is Tintoretto's Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples, which hangs, somewhat ravaged by time and restorations, in the National Gallery, and used to live in the church of San Trovaso in Venice, where it hung opposite a Last Supper by Titian (which is still there). 
  Talking of Last Suppers, the most famous image of that event is the most problematic – the mural painted by Leonardo for the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Because of the materials Leonardo used, various environmental factors and intentional damage over the years, very little of the original painting survives, and what we see today is the product of numerous restorations. Even in the artist's lifetime, his Last Supper was beginning to disintegrate, as Dick Davis recalls in his short, eloquent poem, 'Leonardo' (collected in Seeing the World, 1980) –

My years were given
To permanence –
The arrested dance,
Emblem of heaven. 

Decay invades
The icon of
Eternal love:
My emblem fades

Like human skin:
The wrinkles grow
As if paint too
Partook of sin.

Late, late I see
The meaning of
Incarnate love,
Eternity.