No Halos at the Dinner Table: The Human Side of Leonardo’s “The Last Supper”
Leonardo Da Vinci, “The Last Supper” (c. 1490s), Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy.
Spring is here, and with it blooming blossoms, chirping birds, and cleaning the mud off your favorite pair of kicks. It is also one of the holiest and most celebratory times in the Judeo-Christian calendar, from Easter (and the Holy Week that precedes it) to Passover; a series of holidays that honor the changing seasons, the budding trees, rebirth and renewal. Christians, of course, celebrate Christ’s resurrection, while Jews lay a Seder table to commemorate the Israelites’ triumphant exodus from Egyptian slavery. It is at this table where these stories overlap: it is commonly believed that the Last Supper, the final meal that, according to the Gospels, Jesus shared with his apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion, was in fact a Passover Seder. While this idea has been challenged by biblical scholars – and is certainly not the Seder that we know today – there are still shared elements between the two holy days that this meal recognizes. Both honor mystery, and the unknowable, unshakable power of faith. Both are steeped in human triumph born from deep human pain. And nowhere is this unification of the earthly and the divine more present than in the most famous depiction of “The Last Supper” by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Leonardo’s enormous mural looms over the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy – essentially the monks’ cafeteria. It was painted in the late 1490s, and depicts the moment in the narrative from the Gospel of John where Jesus has informed his apostles that one of them will betray him. Except what Leonardo chooses to depict is not quite that moment. He paints the moment after. The Christ we see is the calm, central anchor of the painting, utterly serene in contrast to the other figures reacting to the bomb he’s just dropped.
And react they do. Each of the twelve monumental figures, separated yet tightly knit together into four groups of three, has a distinctive facial expression and a unique gesture. Each uses his body to represent what Leonardo called the “motions of the soul” – limbs flail, knives are drawn, you can almost hear the furious whispers and scraping of chairs on the floor. And yet, while each apostle is recognizable by his symbolism (Peter, Christ’s protector, wields the knife; Thomas points upward, as if questioning a divine plan) he is even more recognizable by his incredibly human reactions. Hands jerk and push and gesticulate (“did you have any idea?” “None. Did you?” “Not me!”); incredible dynamic tension is created by arms flung out next to arms held in, like a bird flapping its wings. Meanwhile, there isn’t a halo among them. At this moment, their holiness takes a backseat to their humanity.
This tension is especially noticeable in Leonardo’s depiction of Judas. Judas, of course, is the one who will betray Jesus, which is explicit in many other paintings of this scene. Take Domenico Ghirlandaio’s “The Last Supper” from 1480, located in Florence: beyond the enormous, airy space and lack of compression or bustle that distinguishes this version from Leonardo’s, Ghirlandaio intentionally places Judas apart from the group on the other side of the table. Yet in Leonardo’s painting, Judas’ role in the narrative is far subtler: if you look at Christ’s hands (and oh, how beautifully Leonardo’s facility with hands are on display in this painting), you see them reaching, his left for a piece of bread, his right for a bowl. Judas is the hand reaching for that same bowl on the other side, his face in shadow, and his other hand grasping the bag of silver – his payment for his duplicity. Compared to Ghirlandaio’s Judas, Leonardo’s bears no overt markers of being the story’s antagonist. As, indeed, so many human villains don’t.
Domenico Ghirlandaio, “The Last Supper” (1480), Florence, Italy.
Leonardo’s foibles are themselves on display when we consider the state that the mural is in, and has been almost since its final brushstrokes. Frescos, when painted correctly, are created by applying thin coats of tempera painted on a wet surface. You get one shot at it, but the colors are clear and bright; darkness is achieved only through layers of translucent glaze. But Leonardo, the consummate experimenter, wanted to see if he could achieve darker tones by mixing tempera and oil paint onto a dry plaster surface. As often happens (though we rarely hear about it), the gamble didn’t pay off – almost immediately, the painting started to deteriorate, with whole patches flaking off as early as 1517, the year of Leonardo’s death. Even today, the painting is in extremely delicate condition, only just barely rescued in a series of conservation and restoration attempts that have made the colors far more vibrant than an audience would have experienced at the time. If you want to see it in person, you need to book your ticket well ahead, and once there, you’re allowed no more than 15 minutes in the refectory – the mural is that precarious. You’re given a short window to stand in the presence of Leonardo’s divine artistic genius, but don’t lose sight of the inconvenient reality of his earthly experimentation.
This mural’s iconic fame has of course lent itself to a series of tributes and parodies by modern artists. Yet what is most interesting about these later versions is what they choose to reference – elements of both the painting’s divinity and humanity, and how both ideas have evolved into the modern era. Take, for example, Mary Beth Edelson’s “Some Living American Women Artists” from 1972, which features Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” as a poster mockup, with faces of Edelson’s friends and idols (Yoko Ono, Agnes Martin, and Faith Ringgold among them) collaged over the faces of the apostles, and Georgia O’Keeffe holding court as Jesus. The figures are randomly placed; none of them play the role of Judas. There is little reference to the sanctity of the biblical narrative, perhaps, but it is an enormous tribute to the holiness of these artists, who, as women, had so often been left out of the conversation.
Mary Beth Edelson, “Some Living American Women Artists” (1972), The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Or consider, too, Salvador Dali’s “The Sacrament of the Last Supper” from 1955. This Surrealist interpretation of the biblical scene elevates the human figure into transcendent holiness; Christ is blonde, clean-shaven, and contemporary; the figures around him have sacrificed their own unique humanness by covering their faces. The architecture around their devotion evaporates. This is divinity in the atomic age, Dali seems to be saying. This is what it means to be a devout Christian, as Dali was, after the literal nuclear bomb has been dropped.
Salvador Dali, “The Sacrament of the Last Supper” (1955), The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
So consider for yourself what Leonardo’s mural can evoke as the season changes. I know that I’ll enjoy the divine scent of spring air from my open windows as I clean the earthly mud off my sneakers. And I’ll sit down at my Passover table with my family and think about its history, and how the wisdom and holiness of those ancient stories – and the paintings that tell them – are so deeply rooted in the mysterious, imperfect substance that makes us human.
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