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

When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was once 42 years previous, he had­n’t but com­plet­ed any primary pub­licly view­ready paintings. Now not that he’d been idle: in that very same technology, whilst paintings­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed professional­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal professional­ces­sions, mask, joust­ing excursion­na­ments, and performs, for which he chore­o­graphed in step with­for­mances, engi­neered and dec­o­rat­ed level units and props, or even designed cos­tumes.” So explains gal­lerist and YouTu­ber James Payne in the brand new Nice Artwork Defined video above, by means of estab­lish­ing the con­textual content by which Leonar­do would pass on to color The Closing Sup­in step with.

For the defin­i­tive Renais­sance guy, “the­atre was once a nat­ur­al are­na to mix artwork, mechan­ics and design.” He beneath­stood “no longer simplest how in step with­spec­tive labored on a three-dimen­sion­al level, however the way it labored from dif­fer­ent van­tage issues,” and this knowl­edge ended in “what will be the nice­est the­atri­cal stag­ing of his existence”: his paint­ing of Jesus Christ telling the Twelve Apos­tles that one among them will betray him.

This view of The Closing Sup­in step with makes extra sense if you happen to see it no longer as a decon­tex­tu­al­ized symbol — the best way maximum folks do — however because the mur­al Leonar­do actu­al­ly paint­ed on one wall of Milan’s Con­vent of San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, whose house it extends (and the place it makes extra sense for each­one to be seat­ed on one aspect of the desk).

Payne is going in-depth on no longer simply the visu­al tech­niques Leonar­do used to make The Closing Sup­in step with’s com­po­si­tion so pow­er­ful, but additionally the untest­ed paint­ing tech­niques that finish­ed up has­ten­ing its dete­ri­o­ra­tion. When you do pass to San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, consider that at easiest a quar­ter of the mural’s paint was once carried out by way of Leonar­do him­self. The remainder is the results of an extended restora­tion procedure, made pos­si­ble by way of the exis­tence of sev­er­al copies made after the paintings’s com­ple­tion. And certainly, it’s simplest because of a kind of copies, whose mak­er includ­ed labels, that we all know which Apos­tle is which. In contrast to most of the cre­ators of reli­gious artwork earlier than him, Leonar­do did­n’t make any­factor too obvi­ous; slightly, he expressed his for­mi­da­ble talent via the type of sub­tle­ty acces­si­ble simplest to those that take their time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

An Immac­u­overdue Reproduction of Leonardo’s The Closing Sup­in step with Dig­i­tized by way of Google: View It in Top Res­o­lu­tion On-line

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

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Notice­books Get Dig­i­tized: The place to Learn the Renais­sance Guy’s Guy­u­scripts On-line

How Did the Mona Lisa Turn out to be the Global’s Maximum Well-known Paint­ing?: It’s Now not What You Suppose

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Nice­est Paint­ing is Now not the Mona Lisa

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and vast­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the ebook The State­much less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him at the social web­paintings for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.