UPDATED: Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, has denied a controversial scene featuring drag queens was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Super.
Jolly told news channel BFMTV on Sunday that the tableau has nothing to do with the iconic Renaissance painting depicting Jesus’s last meal with the 12 apostles as he tells them that one of their number will betray him.
“It’s not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious. There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called ‘Festivity’,” explained Jolly.
“He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine,” he continued. “The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”
Some spectators who have delved deeper into the myriad of cultural references in the show, have suggested the tableau is in fact inspired by The Feast of the Gods by 17th Century Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert.
The colorful scene, featuring Nicky Doll and stars of Drag Race France, was among 12 tableaux capturing the French spirit incorporated into Jolly’s extravagant Olympics opening ceremony on Friday evening.
A number of high profile figures inside and outside France have erroneously suggested the scene was inspired by The Last Supper.
Devoutly Christian NFL player Harrison Butker suggested the tableau was mocking God, while far-right French politician Marion Maréchal put out a post in English on X addressed “to all Christians who felt insulted” by the sketch saying it was not representative of her idea of France.
Republican politician Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, called the scene “shocking and insulting”.
Jolly told BFMTV: “You will never find in me, or in my work, a desire to mock or denigrate anyone.
“My aim was to create a ceremony that heals and a ceremony that reconciles, but also a ceremony that reaffirms the values which are those of our Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity freedom, and absolutely not to mock anyone.
Jolly said he hoped the work would not be used to sow seeds of division.
“Given that when we’re together, despite all our differences, we can do big, beautiful and moving things, that would be a shame,” he said/
Jolly previously told an official Olympics press conference on Saturday that his intention had not been “to be subversive, mock or shock.”
His intention was rather, he said, to capture France in all its diversity.
“My will is to say we are an immense ‘we’,” he said, adding: “In France, we have the right to love each other, as we want, with whoever we want, in France we have the right to believe and not to believe. In France, we have many rights.”
Maréchal also criticized top-selling, singer-song writer Aya Nakamura’s jubilant act in front of the hallowed Académie Française (the lofty institution preserving the French language), with the military band of the Republican Guard.
The latter appeared to have relished the experience given footage that was released afterwards.
