In 1573 the painter Paolo Veronese (1528 – 1588) was called before the Roman Catholic Inquisition to answer some questions about his massive painting of the Last Supper. Measuring 18 x 42 feet, it was painted for the rear wall of a convent in Venice. Here’s a picture of it, which of course can’t really show you much, but you can get an idea:

Veronese realized he was in serious trouble during his questioning, when it became apparent that he was at risk of being convicted of heresy (punishable by death). His inquisitors demanded to know why he had trivialized an event so fundamental to the Christian faith. Instead of the traditional Last Supper, he’d painted a raucous banquet populated by “buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs and other such scurrilities,” including a guy with a nosebleed and another guy picking his teeth with a fork. There were dogs, cats, and Huns in this sacred scene. And he’d left out Mary Magdalene altogether.

The tribunal demanded that he repaint the offending parts of the scene within three months. But after the trial was over, Veronese came up with another plan: he renamed the painting The Feast in the House of Levi, which evidently appeased the tribunal because they stopped bothering him about it.

You can read a transcript of the trial here.

And you can watch this amusing Monty Python skit where Michelangelo proposes to an enraged pope that they rename his offensive painting “The Penultimate Supper.”