The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day 7

Title: Seven Sacraments Altarpiece
Artist: Rogier van der Weyden
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 200 x 223 cm
Date: c. 1445
Location: Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, seven swans a swimming...

The seven swans are thought to represent the seven sacraments of the church. As represented in this altarpiece by Netherlands painter Rogier van der Weyden, the seven sacraments are, beginning with the left hand panel: baptism, confirmation, and penance; the sacrament of the Eucharist is being performed in the central image; the right-hand part contains the sacraments of ordination, marriage, and extreme unction. The angels hovering above these scenes wear the appropriate liturgical colors, and are holding scrolls with texts explaining the significance of the various sacraments.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper

Title: The Sacrament of the Last Supper
Artist: Salvador Dali
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 267 cm × 166.7 cm
Date: 1955
Location: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Depicted is a representation one of the most significant events in Christian theology. As described in all four Gospels, at the Passover meal with his twelve disciples Jesus presented bread and wine, offered as his body and blood, as the basis for a new covenant between God and his people.

This painting, however, rather than being a historical depiction like Da Vinci’s masterpiece, seems to represent the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Christ himself is translucent and casts no shadow, and the gathered disciples seem to be focused not on the figure, but on the bread and wine displayed on the table. Christ is present, yet not visible to the eye.

Salvador Dali (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was a Spanish painter born in Figueres, and considered a master of the 20th Century surrealist movement. In 1940, as World War II started in Europe, Dali moved to the United States and eventually returned to the practice of Catholicism. There he announced 'My painting in future will be an amalgam of my Surrealist experience and the classicism of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Renaissance.'