LEONARDO'S LAST SUPPER

LEONARDO's LAST SUPPER  

Between 1497 and 1499, before he left Milan for Venice, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) worked
on a commission for Ludovico il Moro, the de facto ruler of Milan. Ludovico intended to have
himself buried in the monastic church of
Santa Maria delle Grazie, close to the Sforza Palace where he lived. In the refectory (dining hall) of the monastery
 

the entire wall (location marked with yellow arrow) was to be painted by Leonardo with the scene of the Last Supper, a subject perfect for the monks' gathering and eating place.

On the opposite wall another artist, Montorfano, was hired to paint the Crucifixion:

No matter which direction the monks looked when dining, they were reminded of the betrayal that led to Christ's death and the sacrifice of blood and body (wine and bread) that Jesus gave up in order to  save their souls from sin.

Since Leonardo's contribution has undergone a recent 22-year restoration (from 1977 to 1999,) it is a good time to look at his version of this subject, perhaps the most famous version of it. Before analysis, though, we ought to be grateful that anything remains of the work. During WWII the church was bombed and had it not been for the sandbags and scaffolding next to the wall, the painting might have been completely destroyed.

soldiers removing debris after bombing

Crucifixion wall seen here at right after bombing

what remained of Da Vinci's wall after bombing


Not only was war a problem for its preservation. The paint itself for the Last Supper began to peel the moment Leonardo finished it because he did not use traditional fresco technique, where fresh plaster is applied to the wall and the pigments are mixed with water. He decided to experiment with linseed oil and pigment, which did not adhere well to the wall. Vasari called the painting a "macchia abbagliata"  (glowing spot) after seeing it in 1550.
  Painting before recent restoration:
 After restoration 1977-99:

The painting before this new cleaning had also been disturbed by "restorers" who wanted to add paint, and fingers, to the figures portrayed on the wall. (At one point St. James the Lesser had six fingers on one hand, after a 1924 restoration.)
 







The new restoration by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon
(shown here)

has taken it back to the original pigments and has eliminated all the overpainting, revealing interesting new aspects to the work, such as nails holding up the tapestries on the side walls of the fictive room painted by Da Vinci


and rooms leading off the main room seen in glimpses between those tapestries.
Not only have the gestures of all the figures been made clearer, but the landscape painted beyond the windows at the back of the room now has the hint of a luscious green-blue, almost impressionistic Tuscan hill scene in the area of the painting where there was a smoky awkward shambles before.

The first thing to notice about Leonardo's Last Supper is that he meant for it to stand as an
illusionistic extension of the actual room of the refectory, a room beyond the wall, with windows
that looked onto a scene outside beyond that:

The magic of that illusion cannot be emphasized enough; in the 15th-century the painter became
the architect of another building just by using perspective. ( In a later century a door was cut into the
middle of the table, but in Leonardo's time no such interruption existed.)

Apart from the wonderful illusion of a head table in another refectory where 12 apostles from history eat with Jesus,

 Leonardo's Last Supper stands out for several other reasons:

1) It shows Leonardo's inclination to organize nature into mathematical units.  In fact, of all the Last Suppers produced in Italy in this period, his is the most well organized:

A) He uses one-point perspective with the one-point centering on Christ's head.  In this way he makes the dramatic center of the composition, Christ, coincide with the physical center of the composition.

B)And he makes Christ's head and arms form a triangle, a solid geometric unit that is a stable, quiet center of focus in the painting:

C) He knows that a painting of 12 men who wear similar clothing will be hard to comprehend unless he gathers them into groups, so he organizes the twelve men into four groups of three.  Within each group of three, the heads of those apostles are pushed close together.

The art historian Ludwig H. Heydenreich has pointed out in his book on the Last Supper (New York: Viking, 1974) that these groups are gathered by family relationships and/or by date of martyrdom. 
Many of the online sites that feature this painting have different identifications for the disciples, but I think that Heydenreich's original analysis still holds true. Of course the feast days or martyrdom death dates occur many years after Christ's death, but the monks would have been aware of the connection of these particular saints within the calendar feast days of the church year. So if two apostles are placed next to each other, the monks would have known that often those saints shared a feast day because they were killed for their faith on the same day.
Starting from the right, the apostles are:

      Matthew (tax collector)    Jude (Thaddeus)who shares a death date with Simon Zelotes




            Thomas                 James the Lesser (Younger)        shares death date with Phillip
            points up                     resembles Christ (brother)         points to self and asks "Is it I, Lord?




Peter        John the Evangelist                           Christ                    Thomas  James Lesser   Phillip



         Peter holds knife               Judas holds money bags            John the Evangelist - pure good
later cuts ear of Roman soldier   elbow spills salt cellar, reaches for bread                    hands folded



                   knife points at Bartholomew     James the Greater (older)                Andrew
                      hands on table                         reaches for brother (John the E)      both hands up

Now for the subject of the Supper. Two events are taking place in Leonardo's Last Supper:
1) THE INSTITUTION OF THE EUCHARIST. Christ says to the disciples, Take this bread and eat from it; this is my body which will be given up for you. Take this wine and drink; this is my blood which will be spilled for you. The first consecration of bread and wine, a consecration which gets reenacted at every Catholic mass after this supper, is shown by Christ's hands. His left hand points out to the bread, his right hand reaches towards the glass of wine. 

2) THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE BETRAYAL OF CHRIST. At the supper Jesus also says that one of the disciples at the table will betray him; it is the person who is about to dip the bread in the dish with him. In previous 15th-century representations of the Last Supper, Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, is placed on the opposite side of the table from Christ so that he is easily picked out as the evil person:
 Castagno's Last Supper, 1447

 Ghirlandaio, Last Supper, San Marco, 1482:

Leonardo, in contrast, places Judas on the same side as Christ in order to ask the viewer to identify the sinner in the group. He wants to start with a mystery. 

He gives Judas dark hair and paints him holding the bag with 30 shekels of silver that he received from the Romans for betraying Christ; in Leonardo's version he also spills the salt shaker on the table, a sign of bad luck. Judas in this scene reaches for the bread to dip into the sop with Christ. The viewer has to find these clues to know which man is the betrayer.

Notice the bread just beyond the glass of wine which Christ's hand is approaching. The bowl of the sop sits between the agitated hands of Judas and Christ and directly below the clasped hands of John the Evangelist, who is at peace because he knows he could never betray Jesus.

The rest of the apostles in the scene all react in personal ways to this announcement and their reactions are individually conveyed by Leonardo so vividly that we can see their gestures and faces and know their emotional responses as if they were live people, just by looking at them. It is Leonardo's powerful ability to render human emotional response and intent that has given this painting the fame it deserves. 

Christ's left hand horrifies his brother, James the Lesser, who is the disciple who looks most like him.
James' eyes are cast down at Christ's hand near the bread in front of James. James throws out both hands and opens his mouth, as if to say, "Surely you can't mean that I would ever betray you, your
own brother?"

Behind his right shoulder Thomas, Doubting Thomas, points his finger up for two reasons that refer to life after the supper. Thomas later questions Christ's Resurrection after his death and must stick his finger into Christ's wounds to believe. His finger identifies him as the later doubter, but he points up which may refer to another event in Thomas' life after Christ's death. When Mary, Christ's mother dies, she is said to have handed down from heaven her belt, or girdle, to Thomas as a keepsake, and his pointing upward here may refer to the fact that he later has this heavenly connection with Christ's mother.
Phillip points both hands to himself and looks sorrowful, as if to say, "Is it I, Lord?" which the
Gospels say all of the disciples asked Jesus.
James the Lesser goes on to become the first bishop of Jerusalem. His death date is the same as
Phillip's, hence their being placed next to each other here at the table. They are both martyred on May 1st, so that is their feast day.

Matthew holds out both hands pointing to Christ to his companions, as if to say, "Can you believe he has suggested that about us? Both Jude and Simon converse with hand gestures that say, "He thinks one of us will betray him, did you hear what he said?" Their incomprehensibility is conveyed in their
hands, the other language used by Italians to speak. Since Jude and Simon later die together on the same day, their turning towards each other here to discuss what their master has said, when they are
not hearing very well because of old age, is very poignant. Their shared martyr day is October 28.

The left end of the table has Bartholomew, who was thought to have been flayed alive in Armenia
later. Peter's knife points directly at him, as if to prefigure that flaying. James the Greater, the James of Santiago de Compostela, reaches around the shoulders of Andrew to touch the shoulder of Peter.
Since Peter and Andrew are brothers, it is understandable that they are seated next to each other, but James is the brother of John the Evangelist, so he is trying to reach his brother, through Peter, to find out what he thinks of the announcement and connect with his brother in a time of stress. Bartholomew has both hands on the table and has stood up in consternation at the betrayal announcement. The palms of Andrew's hands placed toward the viewer express disbelief, too.

Peter's reaction is one of anger, hence his reaching for the knife, and he touches John the Evangelist as if to ask how this can be. John does not reply because he knows he is not the betrayer and could never be, as he is the purest of the disciples and most like Christ in temperament:

This grouping of Peter, Judas, and John the Evangelist is the most common in Last Suppers during this period. Judas represents pure evil, John pure good, and Peter something in between, as he is often placed in between Judas and John. Peter, later when Christ is arrested because of Judas' betrayal, also refuses to acknowledge that he, Peter, is a disciple of Christ, three times before the cock crows, because he is afraid of arrest himself. So Peter is not pure good, but not pure evil either, something of a mixture of both, as most human beings.

Through gestures and facial expression, Leonardo gives us the full range of human experience in
this painting: disbelief, horror, calm ignorance, evil intent, sorrow, and outrage.  

If you scroll from left to right here, you will see closely the emotional responses in the drama.
Bartholomew - astonishment        James the Greater -questioning                Andrew - denial
Judas - repulsion                           Peter - anger                           John the Evangelist - acceptance
Christ - sadness and resignation
Thomas - questioning                    James the Lesser - horror      Phillip - sorrow
Matthew - disbelief     Jude (Thaddeus) - consternation        Simon (Zelotes) - refusal to accept   

The announcement rolls out from Christ both left and right. The wave of energy stops at the framing
figures of Bartholomew and Simon, then pulses back in towards Christ through the diagonals of Matthew's outstretched right arm and the diagonal of John the Evangelist's head and arm.  (The tradition of John the Evangelist being portrayed as young, long-haired, and sitting next to Christ at Last Suppers is so long-established in Leonardo's time that the suggestion that that figure is Mary Magdalene goes beyond the realm of historical precedent.)

The ancient Greek chorus commenting on the central action appears in tumult on either side of
Christ and John the Evangelist's calm. The turbulence rides out and rides back in on waves caused by human fear and astonishment.  Leonardo understands that this group of men are meeting for the last time before their leader will be arrested and crucified, killed. Leonardo understands that each of the men will ultimately die for the faith in the deity who brought them together. He knows the apostles after Jesus' death will go out in many different directions on the earth to spread the word of life after death to as many people as they can. Leonardo's genius is to make every viewer who comes to see his painting feel as if they are back in ancient times at that Supper too. The viewer wonders if he/she is the betrayer after seeing the announcement and its effect on the disciples. Viewers watching realize they need the wine and bread on offer on the painted table to assuage that sense of guilt. They see a group of men who later die for their belief in the central one. Only Christ's face reassures the hall that the pain of that betrayal soon passes into the realm of eternal time.