The Curse of Judas
- Jeffery Vallance -
On a trip to Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, I discovered a depiction of Judas Iscariot I believed to be cursed. The accursed image is part of a stained glass version of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, exhibited in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn cemetery. I quickly set out to search for clues to the origin of this mysterious curse.
According to the Bible, Judas was the carrier of the leather moneybag, or treasurer, for the twelve disciples. The designation Iscariot is from the Latin word sicarius, literally meaning dagger man, and identifies Judas as a terrorist, a member of the most radical anti-Roman groups. The Devil entered the heart of Judas, possessing him to betray his master (John 13:2). The traitor received thirty pieces of silver for his diabolical deed (the payment the law required for killing a slave, equal to the price of blood). The tainted money was used to buy a potter's field, and there the traitor hung himself from a giant tree in remorse: falling headlong, he burst in the middle and all his bowels gushed out (Acts 1:18). A potter's field is a piece of land composed of the type of clay used for ceramics and in which bodies decompose quickly. The actual field that Judas purchasedcalled Aceldama, or The Field of Bloodis located outside Jerusalem on the south side of the Valley of Hinnom. The Hebrew word Hinnom is the root of the Latin Gehenna or Hellthe place of eternal punishment. As stated in the New Testament, cursed is every one who hangeth on a tree (Galatians 3:13). Thus began the curse of Judas.
Vision of Our Founder
The founder of Forest Lawn, Dr. Hubert Eaton, believed that he had the responsibility to enrich the cultural life of his community, so he commissioned a series of monumental artworks to decorate his cemetery, including the rendition of The Last Supper in question. The Founder wanted his cemetery to be devoid of misshapen monuments of death and to be filled with beautiful artwork for the living. Every time I visit Forest Lawn, I feel like an unholy ghoul, gleefully trampling over graves, making my way to the tempting attractions. Like a child in church, forced to stifle an inappropriate snicker, I'm always about to burst into uncontrollable, diabolical laughter at the cemetery (the best satire of Forest Lawn can be seem in the delightfully morbid 1965 film The Loved One, which features Liberace as a prissy coffin salesmen). On the grounds is everything needed for the final tribute: mortuary, cemetery, crematorium, mausoleum, church and gift shop. Visitors are only required to observe only a few strict rules: no lying down or picnicking on the gravesand no plastic flowers on the graves.
Next to what is billed as the World's Largest Religious Painting by Jan Styka is an amazing little museum that features a fake set of the British Crown jewels, a letter from Martha Washington and one of but a few colossal Easter Island heads (moai) ever to be removed from Polynesia. (Islanders from Rapa Nui believe these tikis are inhabited by their ancestral spirits.) Also proudly displayed are fragments of a fake Michelangelo's David, which toppled over in the great California quake of 1971. Broken pieces of David's head and toes are arranged as antediluvian relics.
Located in the Great Mausoleum is the Memorial Court of Honor, where the window depicting The Last Supper is displayed. The Memorial Court is hailed as the new Westminster Abbeya national shrine for the entombment of great Americans who have been proclaimed Immortal by the Council of Regents. The tomb includes the earthly remains of sculptor Gutzon Borglum, famous for carving Mount Rushmore.
When Dr. Eaton saw the original Last Supper in Milan, he was galled by the painfully flaking, fading and deteriorating surface of the work. While standing in front of the painting, the Founder had a prophetic vision: he vowed to preserve the masterpiece foreverin the form of stained glass! He located the Italian stained glass artist Rosa Caselli-Moretti to see if she would be the one for this holy task. Rosa stood transfixed as the Founder poured out his vision and then cried out, I would give my soul to do it! (This response is usually reserved to address Satan when making a diabolical pact. Preserved in the Archivo General de la Nacion in Mexico City is a copy of just such a demonic pact, written in 1717 by professed nun Sor Margarita de San José of the convent of Jesus Maria. Pacts with the Devil usually use unintelligible words in order to hide the illicit nature of the document.)
Caselli-Moretti labored for six years on the stained glass window until it was complete, except for the portrait of Judas Iscariot. That portrait burst five times in the firing; Rosa, a devout Christian, exclaimed, Why only Judas? Perhaps it was not God's intention to have the figure of the betrayer completed. Dr. Eaton became very anxious in response to Rosa's letter, which stated, I have prayed. I shall try once more. But if the Judas breaks again, I shall not finish The Last Supper. There were many sleepless nights for the Founder, who tossed and turned in a cold sweat until he received Rosa's next message. Finally, on the sixth firing, Judas was made complete (the number six, of course, is the Mark of the Beast).
The Forest Lawn version of The Last Supper is said to be not a copy, but a stained glass recreation that is better than the original because it will not flake or fade. Here, we are told, the masterpiece is seen not the way it looks in Milan now but the way it should have looked when Leonardo first painted it, had he not been so lazy, for he never completely finished the work.
To view this recreation, one has to buy a ticket. I found it quite disconcerting being in a tomb surrounded by dead bodies waiting to be entertained. I didn't know whether I wanted to laugh or cry. Sitting in a theater seat with a Medici Tomb sculpture on my right and La Pieta on my left, I awaited the program. As dramatic narration began, a cold chill ran up my spine, and the curtains opened to reveal the marvelous window.
A series of motorized shutters installed behind the stained glass create changing light that mimics the varying positions of the sun throughout the day. It is said that the morning sun, like an invisible artist, paints the window anew each day. As the light fades in the evening, a bona fide miracle takes place: for a moment only, the face of Jesus remains visible while everything else has disappeared.
A pamphlet prepared by the staff states that the window combines all the finest characteristics of the master's style, but unlike the original, it does not lose its beauty as you draw closer to it. I felt an unaccountable queasiness when I recognized the image of Judas, leaning away from Jesus and nervously reaching for a loaf of bread (the rest of the apostles do not seem concerned with food). Judas' right hand clutches a sack of coins, while his arm knocks over a container of salt (an omen of bad luck).
Accused Masterpiece
From 1495 to 1498, Leonardo painted The Last Supper on a wall in the rectory, or dining hall, of the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan. Leonardo's masterpiece was cursed from the beginning, making it one of the greatest tragedies in the history of art. First, the actual wall on which it was painted was filled with moisturerubble oozing with acids. Second, Leonardo used egg tempera paint in place of the classic method of fresco (a technique of painting directly on wet plaster so pigment fuses with the wall). Instead, tempera was painted on an experimental concoction of pitch mixed with mastic.
The substance called pitchalso referred to as slime, bitumen, asphaltum or taris a thick black viscous liquid produced by the distillation of fossilized vegetable matter, the same material Noah used to waterproof the wood of his arc (Genesis 6:14). Mastic is an aromatic resin used by chefs in the Middle East to thicken soups. In the Bible, this gummy substance is called the Balm of Gilead, an ointment of purportedly miraculous healing properties (Jeremiah 8:22). Mastic is derived from the excrescence of pistachio tree galls, a fungal growth. (Christ, while hanging on the cross, was offered a drink of vinegar and gall, which was delivered to him on a sponge placed on the end of a hyssop reed.) Sadly for The Last Supper, Leonardo's alchemical mixture of slime and gall soon began to cause the tempera to flake off the wall.
The curse continued. In 1500, a deluge of Apocalyptic proportions flooded Milan. Water stood several feet high in the Last Supper rectory. By 1556, much of the original paint had flaked off, leaving only a muddle of blots with scarcely any distinguishable features. In 1652, the painting was desecrated. A doorway was hacked through, cutting off the Savior's beautiful feet. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a series of inept restorations attempted by mediocre artists transformed Leonardo's eloquently painted figures into mutilated deformities. In 1796, Napoleon intervened to protect The Last Supper, ordering his troops to be respectful of the painting, but they disobeyed, turning the refectory into a stable, filling a holy place with the foul stench of manure. Then, in August of 1943, during a WWII air raid, a bomb missed the painting by only a few yards. Miraculously, the wall on which The Last Supper was painted was one of a few left standing in the area, but more damage was done to the exposed painting by subsequent rains and mounds of sandbags left leaning against it.
In 1992 when I viewed The Last Supper, most of the painting was obscured by scaffolding. The area I could see was under restoration. When I drew closer to the painting, it seemed to disappear altogether, looking like the pockmarked surface of the moon, and as I stepped back, it faded and became indistinct. I found the best way to view the painting was halfway into the room, at which point a kind of optical illusion occurred that made me believe I was somehow seeing the painting. I came to the conclusion that no one really sees The Last Supper; one is just allowed to enter the space where the masterpiece once existed. Afterward, I felt impelled to buy a Last Supper souvenir from a tacky little stand to commemorate the experience.
The Last Supper is one of the most reproduced paintings in the world and is now truly cursed, having been transformed into a kitsch icon. It can be seen on key chains, ceramic plates, plastic statues, rugs and nightlights, to all of which I have some kind of sick attraction.
Jeffrey Vallance, The Curse of Judas, 1998
Pencil, pen, collage on paper
22 x 30 inches
The Legend of the Judas Tree
According to tradition, the type of tree on which the terrorist Judas hung himself was an elder tree, henceforth known as the Judas Tree. It is also believed that the cross of Christ was made of elder wood, although some believe it was dogwood. (It has been observed that no matter how many splinters are taken from the True Cross, it never diminishes in size.) In America, the redbud is often called the Judas Tree. According to legend, Judas hung himself at midnight, and in the morning, the tree was seen shedding crimson drops of blood that miraculously turned into red buds. At Easter time, magenta buds appear before the development of heart-shaped leaves. Blossoms of the redbud can be eaten as a delicious salad. The redbud is the state tree of Oklahoma, where the Federal building in Oklahoma City was the site of the infamous 1995 terrorist bombing.
As an herbal remedy, hot elder-flower tea is used as a diaphoretic (sweat inducing treatment for blood toxicity). Cold elder-flower tea is used as a diuretic. In the seventeenth century, it was believed that a potion of elder flowers would keep the body in a youthful condition. Native Americans call the elder tree the tree of music, using the stems to make flutes and deadly arrow shafts. According to folklore, if a horseman on a long journey puts two elder sticks together in his pocket, his buttocks will not gall or chafe. Another superstition holds that if a boy is beaten on the buttocks with an elder stick, his growth will be stunted. Anatomy of the Elder, published in 1653, states that to avoid evil curses, garlands of elder leaves can be affixed to one's doors and windows, or an amulet of elder wood, made in the shape of a cross, can be hung around the neck. The elder tree has a cranberry-colored drupaceous berry used in making jams, jellies and winea traditional favorite at Christmastimewhile Manischewitz Wine Company of Naples, New York, puts out a distinctive Kosher version. I spent many a night doing research on Judas with a glass of blood-red elderberry wine at my side.