It appears to me, also, a gross fault to introduce dogs and cats, and other animals; although I have heard it observed, that a dog gnawing a bone is introduced with propriety, to show that the supper is over, the Paschal Lamb eaten, before the moment represented.
Vulgar heads, taken from vulgar models, or selected without any regard either to the ancient types, or the traditional character of the different apostles, are defects of frequent occurrence, especially in the older German schools; and in Titian, Paul Veronese, and Rubens, even where the heads are otherwise fine and expressive, the scriptural truth of character is in general sacrificed.
It is a fault, as I have already observed, to represent Judas anxiously concealing the purse.
Holbein, in his famous Last Supper at Basle, and in the small one in the Louvre, has adopted the usual arrangement: the heads all want elevation; but here the attention fixes at once upon Judas Iscariot—the very ideal of scoundrelism—I can use no other word to express the unmitigated ugliness, vulgarity, and brutality of the face. Lavater has referred to it as an example of the physiognomy proper to cruelty and avarice; but the dissimulation is wanting. This base, eager, hungry-looking villain stands betrayed by his own looks: he is too prominent; he is in fact the principal figure;—a fault in taste, feeling, and propriety.
The introduction of a great number of figures, as spectators or attendants, is a fault; excusable, perhaps, where the subject is decorative and intended for the wall of a refectory, but not otherwise. In the composition of Paul Veronese, there are twenty-three figures; in that of Zucchero, forty-five; in that of Baroccio, twenty-one. These supernumerary persons detract from the dignity and solemnity of the scene.
Tintoretto has introduced several spectators, and among them an old woman spinning in a corner, who, while she turns her spindle, looks on with an observant eye. This alludes to an early tradition, that the Last Supper was eaten in the house of Mary, the mother of Mark the evangelist. But it is nowhere said that she was present, and therefore it is an impropriety to introduce her. Magnificent architecture, as in the picture by B. Peruzzi (who, by the way, was an architect), seems objectionable: but equally unsuitable is the poor dismantled garret in this picture of Tintoretto; for the chamber in which the scene took place was ‘the guest chamber,’ a large upper room, ready prepared; and as it was afterwards the scene of the Pentecost, it must have held more than a hundred persons.