Before news broke of the brazen murder of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife at their home, reporters were doing what they do every agonizingly news-less Easter weekend: scrounging for something to report on, preferably, given the season, religiously oriented.
That's must be what led CBS 11's Joel Thomas to the Christian Arts Museum in Fort Worth this weekend where he discovered that, yes, the sign outside tells the truth: there really is a life-sized wax display of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper."
The display takes up an entire room and features a beatific, flaxen-haired Jesus flanked by his 12 disciples, who are in an uproar following his prediction that one of them (Judas, carrying a money pouch) would betray him.
It was created by wax sculptor Katherine Stubergh in the 1950s at the behest of William Fleming, a Fort Worth oil tycoon who, according to CAC's website, intended it as a "gift to all Christians."
Museum director Ed Malone explained to CBS that Stubergh sewed on the hair and mustaches by hand and used glass eyes. "So that makes them more vibrant whenever you see them." As for Christ's historically inaccurate blond hair: "She felt like that gave more of a divine appearance to Jesus," Malone said. See for yourself:
"Most of the time they're kind of awed when they walk around the corner and see all of them at the table," Malone told Thomas. "It grows on you as you sit there and hear the presentation about the Last Supper, it really grows on you. And you begin to see these people come to life." And so can your children, in their nightmares and future therapy sessions.
