Nelli

Last Supper, by Plautilla Nelli, circa 1560s.

I’ve had many names. Even before my birth, my godmother assumed I’d carry her last and engraved it on a tiny gold medal that I wore for the first years of my life. As time passed, I picked up few names and shed other ones, having no regrets in my personal (and chosen) nomenclature.

One of the names left behind was Nelly - the second name of my first double name, like Mary Anne or Rose Mary. Brazilian names are a bit like dressing up in layers; no point in just picking up a solid warm coat and calling it a day. Instead, let’s pick up a name here, a name there; next thing we know, our names resemble the ones reserved for the British royals.

I digress…back to Nelly. I dropped it because I wanted a simpler name, fewer words to fill in forms, and I rarely think about it. But when the name shows up, I pay attention.

If you have been to Europe, or maybe you live here, you know that after a dozen or so cathedral visits, they start to blend in a bit. Was that painting here or there? Did that church have a stained-glass window that looks just like the one in Notre Dame? It’s a lot to absorb, but once in a while, there is a piece of art or a quiet place or a particular scent that leaves a mark and changes us in an imperceptible but essential way.

Yesterday that happened to me as I was visiting the Cathedral Santa Maria Novella. I had been there before, walking the floors, seeing the large paintings that were recently removed from the walls to expose the frescos they were meant to preserve. All very historically fascinating. What I had not done before was visit the museum that accompanies the cathedral - a once large monastery, now turned into huge empty hallways with a few pieces of art on display, and a quiet nun sweeping the floors here and there. The place, a maze of ‘turn left and right’, made me feel like I was walking in circles, but it finally delivered me to a dark room close to the exit. The room felt like an afterthought, ‘oh hey, before you go, check out these last bits of art we couldn’t fit in the main chambers’. And the visitors’ general attitude, dizzy from circling, ‘yeah sure, this is great, but I need to find some water; it’s 100 degrees here, why can’t churches have AC?’ So I ran my eyes across the heavily embroiled Cardinal robes, the wooden sculptures of Jesus nailed to the cross, looking so sad and skinny, a window filtering in some natural light and above it a large Last Supper oil on canvas.

I stopped on my tracks and gathered what I was seeing above the window, in the darkroom that begs visitors to just, please, leave. In impressive detail there it was: Jesus, eyes gently downcast, holds a woman, his hand touching her hair. The woman, leaning in, has her eyes closed. They are embracing, right there, sitting by the table; the other apostles watching the intimate moment with a mixture of reverence and love.
I have seen my share of Last Suppers, I’m not ashamed to confess. From museums all over Europe to grand depictions in the Vatican, to the images in my grandmother’s most beloved Bible. But this was different and you could feel it. There was just something extremely sweet and private about the image - it felt like walking into a couple looking into each other’s eyes and whispering something secret, or a mother breastfeeding her child on a park bench, or two friends in quiet conversation as you barge right in with your unwanted noise. You take the image in, feel the love there, and look away to respect the privacy of the moment.
The author of this piece, I soon found out through my friend The Poet, was Plautilla Nelli, a nun in the 1500s, and my namesake of sorts.
Nelli led a painters workshop at her nunnery and dedicated herself to painting the Last Supper and other works which were kept from public viewing for 450 years. Besides the fact that Nelli was a painter while also being a woman (the shame!), I believe that the other reason the Last Supper was especially left under covers is that the character Jesus so lovingly embraces could be no other than Mary of Magdalene, though publicly, it looks like they are saying it’s John. There is no way that’s John. Come on now.
So off I went into several hours of ‘Da Vinci Code’ search for more on Magdalene. I know, it’s cliché at this point to read about something that has been so truly covered (or uncovered), but I couldn’t help it. With every article read a fresh reminder of what I already knew — the Church’s quest to subdue and suffocate and subjugate women. Starting with Eve and her fruit choices, connecting the dots across the ‘scripture’ where females are portrayed as temptresses or houses for demons or mere objects to be given to males as trophies.
It all, however, culminates with Magdalene. Who was she really? A prostitute? A possessed body housing 7 demons? A rich woman carrying around expensive perfume in alabaster jars? A true Apostle and perhaps the closest person to Jesus? Let’s not sensationalize the nature of love, but perhaps yes, maybe Jesus loved Magdalene in a way that was quite different than the one he shared broadly across the land. I don’t profess to know. So much to unpack here, but I don’t like long blog posts, so I’ll leave it up to you to read as there are a gazillion scholarly papers on the subject. Each one begging the question: why are women following a church that has diminished them so?
However, this is fairly agreed upon across the written records — when Jesus resurrected, it was Mary of Magdalene that he appeared to first. And that means something. Something fundamentally extraordinary that points to how unique this woman was. Think about it. He could have shown up to anyone. Anyone. But it was Magdalene that rested eyes upon his miraculous return first. And he called her by her name. ‘Mary,’ he said.
Every dude who has read the Bible knows this. Nelli, painting the love between the two of them half a millennium ago just to have the picture hidden and later labeled as John, knew this. And this once-upon-a-time-Nelly, yours truly, knows it too.
—jm