The last supper again and again

Connor Harrison takes a trip to the RA, for the latest offering in his series of columns about the best and the oddest museum and gallery cafes

This copy lacks the top third of the original composition, but shows details that are not now visible in the original, like the salt-cellar overturned by the right arm of Judas and the feet of Jesus

The Royal Academy of Arts

I come in off the street and onto the courtyard of the RA. It is a bright enough day to draw out the Courtyard Café, an arrangement of tables under parasols like large, metropolitan cocktails. At the coffee stand I ask for an Americano and their raspberry and pistachio slice, and take a seat facing Piccadilly. When I enter the Academy, I begin at the end, and sit at the leather bench below The Last Supper. For the first time, the cruel irony of calling it the last supper dawns on me. Over and again, this domestic tragedy plays out, in text and image and church, frozen in the moment of no return. How many times have they come to that table – fate written out before them – to share that bread and red wine? “I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” Here it is again, the faux-shock on Judas’ face, his elbow in the salt. The Groundhog Day of meals.

*

Falling for an afternoon of false summer, the RA has brought its chairs and tables out to the courtyard. The wind, skimming paper plates and exhibit guides underfoot, has other ideas, so I head inside, to the closeted warmth of the RA’s main café. Among shades of dark wood and red cherry, I drink my Americano – a nice, clean coffee that could do with at least a little mud under its nails. Some residue of work. I take the taste of it to the Collection Gallery and stand with the men at their long table. They are discussing some long ago future again, with the soft blue evening at the window. Judas slices a lemon. The familiar citric smell enters the room.