The Growing Last Supper

There are no profound conclusions from this study but the methodology is fairly interesting.

From The Atlantic...

My brother—a religious studies professor at Virginia Wesleyan College—and I indexed the sizes of all of the entrees, loaves of bread, and even plates in the 52 most famous Last Supper paintings from the past millennium featured in Last Supper (2000, Phaiden Press), based on the sizes of people's heads. Through plagues and potato famines, the average size of entrees increased by 69 percent, plates by 65 percent, and bread by 23 percent. (The only thing that didn't continually increase with time was the number of wine bottles on the table—that peaked in the apparently party-happy 16th century.)

Interestingly, the 16th century was also the time period that showed the biggest increases in portion size. This bump—along with the general increase over 1,000 years—seems to mirror the economic prosperity and availability of food in Italy, Holland, Germany, and Spain, where these paintings originated.