How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Final Supper: A Deep Dive Right into a Masterpiece

When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was 42 years previous, he had­n’t but com­plet­ed any main pub­licly view­ready work. Not that he’d been idle: in that very same period, whereas work­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed professional­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal professional­ces­sions, masks, joust­ing tour­na­ments, and performs, for which he chore­o­graphed per­for­mances, engi­neered and dec­o­rat­ed stage units and props, and even designed cos­tumes.” So explains gal­lerist and YouTu­ber James Payne in the new Nice Artwork Defined video above, by means of estab­lish­ing the con­textual content by which Leonar­do would go on to color The Final Sup­per.

For the defin­i­tive Renais­sance man, “the­atre was a nat­ur­al are­na to mix artwork, mechan­ics and design.” He below­stood “not solely how per­spec­tive labored on a three-dimen­sion­al stage, however the way it labored from dif­fer­ent van­tage factors,” and this knowl­edge led to “what can be the nice­est the­atri­cal stag­ing of his life”: his paint­ing of Jesus Christ telling the Twelve Apos­tles that one in all them will betray him.

This view of The Final Sup­per makes extra sense if you happen to see it not as a decon­tex­tu­al­ized picture — the best way most of us do — however because the mur­al Leonar­do actu­al­ly paint­ed on one wall of Milan’s Con­vent of San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, whose area it extends (and the place it makes extra sense for each­one to be seat­ed on one aspect of the desk).

Payne goes in-depth on not simply the visu­al tech­niques Leonar­do used to make The Final Sup­per’s com­po­si­tion so pow­er­ful, but additionally the untest­ed paint­ing tech­niques that finish­ed up has­ten­ing its dete­ri­o­ra­tion. If you happen to do go to San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, keep in mind that at finest a quar­ter of the mural’s paint was utilized by Leonar­do him­self. The remaining is the results of an extended restora­tion course of, made pos­si­ble by the exis­tence of sev­er­al copies made after the work’s com­ple­tion. And certainly, it’s solely because of a kind of copies, whose mak­er includ­ed labels, that we all know which Apos­tle is which. Not like lots of the cre­ators of reli­gious artwork earlier than him, Leonar­do did­n’t make any­factor too obvi­ous; fairly, he expressed his for­mi­da­ble ability by the sort of sub­tle­ty acces­si­ble solely to those that take their time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

An Immac­u­late Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Sup­per Dig­i­tized by Google: View It in High Res­o­lu­tion Online

Is the Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ing “Sal­va­tor Mun­di” (Which Sold for $450 Mil­lion in 2017) Actu­al­ly Authen­tic?: Michael Lewis Explores the Ques­tion in His New Pod­cast

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing?: It’s Not What You Think

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.