LEOnARDO DA VIncI`s LAsT suppER

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Leonardo da Vinci’s
Last Supper
Lamberto Cantoni
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
lamberto cantoni
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
lamberto cantoni
The figure of Christ after restauration.
The painting before restoration.
The magnificent mural painting of the great
artist-cum-inventor Leonardo da Vinci attracts a nearly endless stream of visitors to
Milan every year. The worldwide fame both
he and his work of art-perhaps the most famous and admired single such work in the
country-will in all likelihood make the chance
to see it a high priority for visitors planning to
attend Expo 2015 this year.
Milan called il Moro, must have thought it
would never be finished. Those last touches
must have brought a palpable sigh of relief
at court since Leonardo had always struggled with his inner demons in labouring to
compose his works and projected designs
and many were left incomplete or on paper
in his sketchbooks.
Contemporaries who saw the new painting
were awe-struck. The impression was so
breath-taking that everyone saw it as though
the artist had wrought some kind of magic spell in paint. The Last Supper was on its
way to becoming the universal essence of
the expressive power of painting for following generations. Even now, after the plethora of aesthetic and formal experiments of
the avant-garde and off-shoot movements
According to Luca Pacioli, mathematician
and friend of Leonardo, da Vinci finally finished The Last Supper in 1498 in what later became the refectory of the Dominican
Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In the
4 years he took to put the last brush strokes
to the painting, more than one person at
the court of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
lamberto cantoni
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
lamberto cantoni
The figure of Christ before restauration.
Detail of a garland in the lunettes.
Detail of the bread on the table.
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
lamberto cantoni
that came to the fore throughout the course
of the twentieth century, art lovers the world
over still see Leonardo’s work as a unique
artistic achievement carrying the values and
visionary scope that exceptional works of
art embody and transmit.
Phillip apostle.
Today, although the painting can be seen
by only small groups of people at a time for
reasons of conservation, more than 300,000
queue up at the entry to the refectory every year awaiting their turn to contemplate
what remains of that artistry and the magic
St John.
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
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Detail, position of the figures’ hands.
technique to endow the figures and forms
he depicted with new solidity and light. The
carefully wrought natural details were worthy of those in Pliny’s tale of Zeuxis, and
we can readily imagine how sensational an
impression this illusion of perspective was
in an age when most people judged a work
of art by its resemblance to the real. Once
they became accustomed to the painting’s
new aesthetic perceptions and emotive sensations, the good friars must have wondered
about how such a visual rendering could
be gleaned from the Gospel since Leonardo’s depiction was nothing like other images then in circulation. Indeed, traditional iconographic representations of the Last
Supper had the Apostles arrayed in double
file with Judas to one side and Christ in the
this masterpiece works. Yet where does its
power to fascinate reside? How is its beauty
beheld? Let’s try to imagine how the painting first appeared to the courtiers and the
Dominican friars who took their meals in
the refectory. None had probably ever been
so close to such an image of the sacred before. The effect Leonardo had endowed his
work with was such as to extend the room’s
surrounding space in which the long table
at which Christ and his Apostles are seated
appeared to be tangible, projecting the likeness to a real one that must have seemed
to truly prodigious. To the devoted friars it
was as if the verses of the Last Supper in the
Gospels of Matthew and John had somehow
materialised before them.
Leonardo had employed an experimental
spake. He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith
unto him, Lord, who is it?” Leonardo has
taken what we might call a dramatic setpiece and magisterially transformed it into
an epiphany of rare human frailty and feeling. Never before had anyone portrayed
human passions and emotions with such
painstaking finesse.
Looking at the gestural and facial expressions of the apostles, we can easily divine
the shadow of dread that tragic prophesy
cast. Some disciples appear cut to the quick
and on the verge of declaring their love for
Jesus, some seem to be intently wondering
aloud whom their Lord was alluding to, and
others still seem to look at him in shock as
if paralysed. Perhaps the apostle who felt
the shock most in Leonardo’s rendering
symbolic centre of the visual field administering the sacrament.
Leonardo instead wanted to highlight the
drama at the climactic moment of the Supper
by rendering the range of feelings evoked by
Christ’s surprising and shocking revelation.
As recounted in the Gospel according to St
John, Jesus announced the approaching end
of his earthly life with the words: “Verily,
verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall
betray me.”
John then tells us the reaction these astounding words had. “Then the disciples looked
one on another, doubting of whom he spake. Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom
one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that
he should ask who it should be of whom he
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
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Detail.
is Simon Peter. He is depicted as suddenly
leaning towards St John, a movement that
pushes forwards a Judas whose suspicious
look expresses embarrassment.
What strikes us most is the range of expressions with which Leonardo endows the
apostles and the measured cadence that invests the entire tableau. While carefully eschewing rhetorical flourishes, he captures
for the viewer the realistic bewilderment of
the apostles without ever losing sight of the
Last Supper’s primary significance resigned
acceptance to the foreshadowed sacrifice the
redemption demands.
It can be surmised that his experiments in
technique and nearly endless tinkering with
depiction enabled Leonardo to execute such
an effective rendering of scene. In fact, the
usual fresco approach of applying colours
quickly to a wet plaster surface would not
let him take the time needed to ponder and
then render in detailed, expressive power
emotions viewers can empathise with. A
dry plaster surface was the matrix needed
more than twenty minutes per group. For
potential viewers who want to prepare for the
visit, they can access a high-definition image of
The Last Supper at www.haltadefinizione.com.
This state-of-the-art digital composition is
made up of 16 billion pixels from high-tech
677 photos. To better grasp just how this one
work has become icon of art itself and the
name of the person who executed it a universal term synonymous with the word artist, suffice it to note that the site registered
1,500,000 hits a 48 hours after it was released
on-line a few years ago.
to ‘cast’ the figures in their apt ‘physical’
presence and bring their facial expressions,
brush stroke by brush stroke, to the pitch
Leonardo wanted his interpretation of the
Gospel story to convey.
Yet this ‘dry’ technique also proved to be
the very undoing of his masterpiece. In the
span of only a few years, the painting began
to flake and led those admirers who would
try to stem the ravages of time and humidity to attempt a series of risky restorations.
The latest such undertaking was completed
in 1999. It had been a twenty-year effort that
removed the over-layers of ‘restored’ colour
that had so wantonly distorted the original
painting and brought to light what remained
of Leonardo’s brush strokes.
A visit to see Leonardo’s masterpiece can be
booked through the accredited agencies. Visits
are limited to 20-25 persons admitted for no
Lamberto Cantoni
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper
lamberto cantoni