'Last Supper' fashion poster banned in Paris

PARIS - A French fashion poster showing women imitating Jesus Christ and his apostles in the Leonardo da Vinci painting "The Last Supper" has been banned in Paris, the second time in a month it has been outlawed.

The Italian city of Milan banned the same poster early in February as a parody of a key event in Christian history. The Last Supper depicts Christ's farewell to his disciples.

A Paris court ordered the French fashion house Marithe and Francois Girbaud late on Thursday to take down the posters within three days because they offended Roman Catholics.

The poster shows women in chic casual clothes seated at a table in postures mimicking da Vinci's famous painting, which he finished in 1497 in a Milan convent. To the right of the Christ figure in the poster, a woman embraces a shirtless man in jeans.

The French complaint against the poster was brought by an association called Beliefs and Freedoms, which was created by the French bishops' conference in 1996.

The Catholic daily La Croix quoted the association's lawyer as saying the poster did "great injury to Catholics because it represents the Last Supper in denigrating conditions."

Defense lawyers argued the poster was based on a painting and not on the Bible, and asked why the Church took legal action against it while doing nothing against the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code by U.S. author Dan Brown.

The international best-seller, set mostly in Paris, argues -- against Christian teaching -- that Jesus was married to his follower Mary Magdelene and the Church had conspired for centuries to hide this.

The shirtless man appears to be a play on Brown's argument that the soft-featured young man seated to the right of Christ in da Vinci's painting -- usually said to be the apostle, John -- was actually Mary Magdelene.

By turning the other characters into women, the poster hints that the man being embraced represents Jesus.

- REUTERS