Leonardo and the Last Supper

Title: Leonardo and the Last Supper

Author: Ross King

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2013 (First published 2012)

ISBN: 9781408831182

Pages: 336

The Last Supper and Mona Lisa are the most famous paintings in the world. Even those who have no exposure to the world of art recognize these two pictures as the epitome of craft and style that made its beginning in Renaissance Italy. After a long gap of five centuries since they were painted, the pictures continue to evoke a sense of wonder in enthusiasts and remain a source of fascination in which new definitions and discoveries are still being made. Leonardo da Vinci painted both these pictures and was considered as the supreme master of the art during his lifetime itself. Few people realize that the Last Supper is not a painting done on canvas or wood, but rather a huge mural artwork (covering a staggering area of 400 square feet) made on the northern wall of the refectory of church Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. This book tells the story of how this amazing picture came to life. It is actually a mix of three individual strands of narration harmoniously commingling in an immensely appealing flow of facts and anecdotes. It describes the life of da Vinci, the biography of the painting and Milanese history during its tumultuous decade from 1490 to 1500. Ross King is a Canadian novelist and non-fiction writer. He began his career by writing two works of historical fiction in the 1990s, later turning to non-fiction and has since written several critically acclaimed and best-selling historical works.

Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci was born in 1452 out of wedlock in the tiny village of Vinci near Florence. Being an illegitimate child, he couldn’t follow his father’s career as a notary. His mother might probably have been a slave girl. Judging from da Vinci’s fingerprints, there are speculations that his mother might have belonged to the Middle East. Leonardo’s father legitimized him and arranged for his son to learn painting as an apprentice of Andrea de Verrocchio, who was a distinguished artist of Florence. There are some interesting pieces drawn by Verrocchio in which Leonardo’s contribution is strongly suspected. Renaissance Florence was a nice place for a creative painter to be, as it had an astonishing proliferation of architects, sculptors, and painters. However, painters were a part of a guild that included drapers, candle makers, hatters and Glovers who worked with their hands. By the same logic, it included doctors and apothecaries too. The young Leonardo was physically strong. He was said to be able to straighten a horse shoe with his bare hands. By around his early thirties, he secured commissions in Florence through both his talent and connections with powerful friends. Most of these commissions met with unhappy fates. Leonardo was not a man who finished his job on time. A combination of distractions, experimentation, a quest for perfection and a general intellectual restlessness made his clients irritated and unhappy with his work. He also indulged in underhanded acts to secure commissions. Once he tried to get the job of designing and casting the bronze doors of Piacenza’s cathedral and wrote an anonymous letter to church officials extolling his talents.

Leonardo moved to Milan in 1482 where the ruthless Duke Lodovico Sforza was making the city smarter and grander with increased taxes and consequent loss of his popularity. Da Vinci wanted a career change as an architect and military engineer rather than continue as a painter because he reached his forties without truly having achieved a masterpiece that would fulfill everything his astonishing talents portended. He had designed numerous machines for the textile trade, such as handlooms, bobbin winders and a needle-making machine. In Milan he wanted to sculpt the figure of Francesco Sforza, the duke’s father, on a horse. Whatever might be Leonardo’s aspirations to become a military engineer, Sforza always used him as an interior decorator and stage designer. The church of Santa Maria delle Grazie was Lodovico’s spiritual abode and he was at great pains to embellish it with works of art and endow it with new buildings. When the question of adorning the walls of the refectory came up, the Duke didn’t think much beyond Leonardo as its creator, even though he tried to wriggle out of the assignment at first. Knowing the great artist’s delaying tactics, he was paired with an undistinguished local painter Giovanni Donato da Montorfano, who was assigned to paint a scene of crucifixion on the wall facing opposite to the Last Supper.

King describes the manners and idiosyncrasies of da Vinci in considerable detail and also his methods of observation and study of men and their actions. Leonardo always went about observing, noting and considering the circumstances and behaviour of men in talking, quarrelling, laughing or fighting together. He continually searched for a fantastic face among the people to make up a repertoire so that each painting differed from others. The difference between a photograph and a painting of the Renaissance era is neatly explained by the author. While a photograph reproduced the pose of a man in an instant, Leonardo captured the man and also the intention of his mind. The first was easy, but the second was devilishly difficult by representing the gestures and movements of the parts of the body. Moreover, a person looking at a painting is like a deaf man studying an animated conversation. He could understand what was happening only through the language of gestures depicted in the image. Since Leonardo was not conversant with fresco painting, what he achieved was a workaround called oil in tempera that was fine to behold in the early years, but contributed to flaking off of paint. Fresco painting must be performed while the plaster is still damp and extremely troublesome. The plaster must not be spread over a larger portion of the surface than can be painted in one day. It must have been a daunting challenge for Leonardo as painting with oil had allowed him to capture the startling visual effects that won him reputation as a painter.

The concept of the ‘Last Supper’ as a theme was not new in Christian art and in fact, it suited the purpose of the refectory (dining hall) as well. One of the oldest surviving examples of the Last Supper is a mosaic from the basilica of Sant’Appollinare Nuovo in Ravenna done in the fifth century, a full millennium before Leonardo’s work. Artists took this scene as part of a cycle showing snippets from the life of Christ. Several amusing facts concerned with ‘The Last Supper’ are described. This book disabuses the readers on some myths in wide circulation such as the same person had modeled for Christ and Judas. This is certainly wrong for the simple reason that the painting took only three years to complete. Leonardo searched the ghettos of Milan for a year to find a man with a suitably vile face. The model for Christ’s face was a soldier from a noble family while his arms were copied from another person. The irony of representing the prince of peace by a military man might not have lost on the great master. The apostles in the picture are replicas of eminent courtiers of Sforza. Leonardo himself is also deemed to have been portrayed in it. Christ’s face is at the geometric centre of the image and a small hole is still visible in his right temple where Leonardo had driven a nail to mark the diminishing point in the picture showing perspective. It is interesting to learn that the Last Supper marked the first time Leonardo drew the adult Christ. In a technique known as hieratic perspective, the figure of Christ is drawn substantially larger in proportion to the other apostles. King also estimates the reward Leonardo received for the painting, which comes to $350,000 in today’s money.

Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was an enormous best seller that portrayed da Vinci as the head of a secret society which preserved Christ’s supposed bloodline into modern times. King clarifies a few allegations made in the book which confused most readers of Brown’s book. What Dan Brown claimed for the figure of Mary Magdalene in the ‘Last Supper’ is in fact Saint John, whose youthful, effeminate and beardless face signified the aesthetic peculiarities of the period that showed adolescent boys with a feminine makeover. A lot of such examples and a convincing reasoning are given in the book. Anyone who still doubts whether the figure of Saint John is actually a woman need only to look at the painting titled ‘St. John the Baptist’ made by Leonardo himself. Some inconsistencies in the book are also to be noted. King claims that Matthew’s Gospel is the oldest, but Bible scholars ascribe that position to Mark’s. King’s narration is lovable and hugely appealing. The extremely small print size of this edition of the book is the only factor that goes against it.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star