The Kingdom (Elgar) Jesus's disciples. It depicts the community of the early church, Pentecost, and the events of the next few days. Elgar had been planning a work depicting the Apostles as ordinary men, reacting to extraordinary events, for many years. His ideas outgrew the confines of a single work: parts of "The Kingdom" were written before "The Apostles", and later Elgar considered them as the first two parts of a trilogy. "The Kingdom" is, in effect, its slow movement. In the event, the projected third part was never written. "The Kingdom" is written for a large orchestra, of typical late Romantic proportions.
Communion of the Apostles (Signorelli) Communion of the Apostles (Signorelli) The Communion of the Apostles is a painting by Italian Renaissance artist Luca Signorelli, dating from around 1512. It is currently housed in the Diocesean Museum of Cortona, Tuscany. The iconography of the painting was rather unusual for Italy, and had been indeed inspired by Justus van Gent's "Corpus Domini Altarpiece" (1472–1474), that Signorelli had seen during his stay at Urbino. Above an ancient style background, similar to Perugino's works, Signorelli painted Christ in the center of the scene, surrounded by brightly dressed apostles in a pyramidal composition. Christ holds a dish with the hosts