Analysis of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper'

The year was 1495, Leonardo is now 43, and had been living here in Milan for 11 years. So much research, so many projects, yet there always remained a dream, an artist's dream of creating a great pictorial work. The occasion materialized, but when? The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, was a friend of this convent, a friend of this community of Dominicans, because he wanted this convent and church to be his family's burial place. He promised the prior that he would finance an important work of art, and so, he said to Leonardo, you will paint the scene of the Last Supper in the Order's refectory. A supper, a supper, Leonardo had been asked to paint the Last Supper. For him, this supper was real, it was a real, tangible supper, he knew that when a group of people assembled around a table to share a meal, he had seen him himself in the Trattorias of Milan and the Sforza Castle. Each person was different. He had seen how everyone ate and drank in their own individual ways, with their own expressions and gestures. So he conceived a real dinner scene, because the Apostles too were real people. And what did he do? First, even before making the first sketches, he decided to take notes of what he saw. He wanted to record what he saw, spontaneous, natural gestures. Here is part of what he wrote as part of these preparatory observations. Play close attention to what he says. I see one man who drank something, put his glass down in its place and turned his head toward the person speaking to him. And then I see someone with knitted brows and interlaced fingers turning toward his neighbor. I see another man with his hands open wide, palms up, shoulders raised, listening intently his mouth wide in astonishment. Another man whispers into the ear of his neighbor who faces him, his ear cocked, paying close attention. I see another figure with a knife in one hand, a knife and a partly cut roll in the other. I also see one in the action of turning, and with a knife in his hand he overturns a glass on the table. And then there's another man leaning his hands on the table and staring. Another man blows on a morsel of food, and another one approaches him to see what everyone is talking about while shading his eyes with his hand. Finally, I see another man leaning backwards, behind the man bent over, and he looks at the man speaking between the wall and the man bent over. So Leonardo observed all this. When we see his first rough sketches, we realize that what he most wanted to show, he even draws a few nude figures, was the range of different gestures, gestures that belong to whom? To each individual, to each one of these people who are all different from one another. This is a supper. When he was commissioned to do the painting, he asked the friars of the convent, what part of the supper do you want me to paint? What should I paint? Everyone has done a last supper, they probably replied. Florence is filled with last suppers. Everyone knows how to paint a last supper. No, no, no, Leonardo responded. A supper is very long. As a painter, I can only paint one moment, one moment. And the moment he chose was not the moment of the Eucharist. It was the moment when Jesus said, one of you will betray. This painting depicts an episode that took place on the afternoon of Holy Thursday, the supper of Holy Thursday, when Jesus was with the apostles. There were three moments that Leonardo could have painted. When Jesus washed his disciples' feet, when he celebrated the Eucharist, or when he said, one of you will betray me. Of these three possibilities, Leonardo chose this statement, this accusation that Jesus makes. So he chose this moment, he chose it himself. Yes, it was his choice, but we also think that it was probably suggested by the priests, the Dominican fathers that lived in the convent. When he made this statement, Jesus was alone. In the painting, he sits inside a perfect equilateral triangle that emphasizes his isolation. How did Leonardo compose this painting? How did he go about it? Most painters, after having made their initial preliminary sketches, work continuously on their painting. But Leonardo didn't do this. His work was constantly being interrupted. How do we know this? There is a document, a famous letter, written by Matteo Bandello, who was present as Leonardo executed the work on the painting. Looking back on the days he spent in the company of the master painter, Bandello recalled, I have seen him often and analyzed him many times. Very early in the morning, Leonardo would climb the scaffold, because the Last Supper is quite high above the floor, and there, from dawn to dusk, not once would he put down his paintbrush. After that, he might go two, three, even four days without touching the painting. But sometimes, for one or two hours a day, he would just stare there, looking at it, studying each figure. So this was Leonardo's method of working. What it means is that while he was painting this masterpiece, Leonardo da Vinci was also thinking about the horse, that huge statue, and he was probably also still thinking about the human anatomy he was dissecting here in Milan. But then he was also probably wondering, how can I perfect that flying machine? In other words, at any given moment of his life, any moment in time, his mind would be envisioning and formulating all sorts of projects, and he was capable of working on each of them in a fragmented way. This is how Leonardo created this wonderful painting. I'd like to go back to something Professor Natali and Florence told us about the theological content that is an essential part of Leonardo's Annunciation. He said, the mountain towering over the sea is Christ in the world, God before His Incarnation, present in the background of the painting, and in the foreground, we find the moment of His Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary. So now, if we understand that God is made incarnate in Christ, and that Leonardo, as an artist, was fascinated by the possibility of depicting the mystery at the very moment of this mystical occurrence, we may draw a connection between his first painting, the Annunciation, and the Last Supper, the mountain, the Word of God made flesh, and Christ who has come to redeem us, but is rejected. Before painting the mural of the Last Supper, Leonardo experimented with various techniques in an effort to achieve the very best visual quality for his images. He succeeded. Not long afterward, however, the mural began to deteriorate. Later on, it suffered a number of disastrous restoration efforts, and then a bombing raid during World War II caused the refectory to collapse, leaving the Last Supper all but unrecognizable. Its definitive restoration was supervised by Dr. Pietro Marani, President of the Raccolta Vinciana. We have filmed the restoration of the Last Supper over the course of several hours, and so we have been alone with this masterpiece for some time. Tell us, how did the restoration begin? It has been a wonderful adventure. I arrived at the superintendency of Milan in 1983, when Professor Bertelli had just started the restoration of the Last Supper. One year later, he put me in charge of the project, along with the conservator, Pinin Brambiglia. Once a decision was made to restore the painting, how long did it take until you finally said the restoration is finished? Not including the studies, but from the moment you knew how you would restore it, how much time passed. Let's see, Bertelli first ordered samples to be done for the painting in 1978, so between the first attempts to remove varnish and older paint, which started in 1978, and the completion of the work in 1999, 21 years went by. It was such a long and drawn-out process that it allowed the team to incorporate several new restoration methods, which made this intervention something of a test lab that others in Europe have learned from. The experience has evolved and changed over these 21 years. I was thinking something. In light of the rise of modern painting, to see the Last Supper in this way, not perfectly defined, the image becomes even more suggestive and is even more open to appreciation. You make a very good point. Modern painting started with the Last Supper. This is what Vasari says when he places Leonardo at the beginning of the modern method, and all the great modern painters, from 1500 onwards, have considered it the most representative example of modern painting. This is because of the shift in depicting moods, movements suggested by the mind, gestures. All of this is a psychology of the characters communicated through their attitudes.