SUPERMODELS have fallen foul of France’s blasphemy laws with an advertising campaign that parodies Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper.

A judge ordered the advertising posters to be removed yesterday from billboards across France within three days or risk a daily fine of €100,000 (£70,000).

The ruling by the Paris court stunned the Parisian media and fashion establishment, which denounced it as an act of censorship contrary to France’s liberal traditions.

The advertising campaign for the Girbaud fashion house shows designer-clad women in the pose of the apostles and a half-naked man as Jesus Christ. Girbaud said that it would appeal against the ruling.

The campaign, which was also banned by magistrates in Milan in February, was described as offensive to Catholics by the presiding judge, Jean-Claude Magendie.

He upheld the case brought by Beliefs and Liberties, an association set up by French bishops, who were particularly upset that the advertisement shows a shirtless man to the right of the model representing Jesus in the arms of one of the female “apostles”.

This appears to be an oblique reference to claims that the effeminate-looking apostle seated on Jesus’s right in da Vinci’s work was his follower, Mary Magdalene, and not John, as is usually stated.

These claims were renewed by the American author Dan Brown, who suggested in his bestselling work, The Da Vinci Code, that the Church had conspired to hide Jesus’s marriage to Mary Magdalene.

Thierry Massis, the bishops’ lawyer, said: “When you attack sacred things, you create a moral violence that is dangerous for our children. Tomorrow we’ll have Christ selling socks.” But Bernard Cohen, acting for Girbaud, said: “The work is a photograph based on a painting, not the Bible. There is nothing in it that is offensive to Catholic religion. It is a way of showing the place of women in society today.”

The Girbaud advertisement is the latest in a long line of controversial reworkings of Leonardo’s painting, from Buñuel’s film Viridiana to more recent satires by the television shows Spitting Image and Shameless on Channel 4, to the late comedian Malcolm Hardee.

Libération, the left-wing newspaper that is a pillar of the liberal classes that dominate much of Parisian society, expressed indignation.

It said that French bishops were increasingly active against what they saw as offensive advertisements.

In recent years bishops have taken legal action over a poster for the film Amen, which showed a Christian cross that merged into Nazi swastikas, and over an advertising campaign for Volkswagen, which showed Jesus saying: “Rejoice, for a new Golf is born.” Both cases were settled out of court.

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