While I sincerely regret the need for writing, I regret more that this is the cause for interrupting my desire to obey your Excellency as always … And if your Lordship were to believe that I had money, you would be mistaken, because I have kept 6 ‘mouths’ in my household for 36 months, for which I have had 50 ducats … I will say nothing about the horse because I know what these times are … and likewise I am still owed my salary for two years since.21
Complaints about money, its absence or its inadequacy, are common to many artists. With Leonardo such complaints become the underlying characteristic of a constant groping towards grandiose dreams forever interrupted by the very nature of their unrestrained ambition. Searching through Leonardo’s chaotic notebooks and letters, it is possible to guess the artist’s agitated state of mind in the closing years of the century, when he was burdened by regrets at having been forced to abandon the work in which he had placed all his aspirations for greatness and had resigned himself to focusing his efforts on painting The Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie [Plates 36, 37, 38]. He was certainly given the commission by a member of the Sforza court, but it is not clear whether it came from Ludovico or from Gian Galeazzo prior to his death, and above all it is not clear when he received it. He was already working on the painting in 1497, given that Ludovico, in a letter of 29 June to Marchesino Stanga, prompted the latter to urge the artist to complete it: ‘Item to urge Leonardo the Florentine to finish the work that he has started in the Refectory of the Grazie, so that he can then attend to the other work.’22 The work is not that large and another Renaissance artist would have completed it in a matter of months, but in Leonardo’s case we know that the conception and realization of the work could and did occupy the artist for years.
Many scholars are convinced that Leonardo started to study the painting of The Last Supper as early as 1492–3, but this hypothesis seems unlikely given that in those years he was very taken with the casting project and would not have had time to dedicate to The Last Supper. It seems more likely that the artist’s interest turned to this painting after 1494, when the metal destined for his horse was carried off to be turned into bombards. Nonetheless, even in the absence of a firm chronology we can follow the painting’s genesis in the very unusual method of its conception. Until then, there is no record of other artists who imagined a scene in the sense of rehearsing it prior to working out the figurative details of the painting. This reversal of the mental approach to a painting stems from his experience of preparing theatrical sets for the Milanese court over the previous ten years. In some folios of the Codex Forster, which can be roughly dated to the period 1495–6, we find the first traces of Leonardo’s project, and here it is imagined as a genuine ‘stage set’:
One who was drinking and left the glass in its place and turned his head towards the speaker…. Another speaks into his neighbour’s ear, and the man who’s listening turns towards him to lend an ear while holding a knife in one hand and half a loaf which he has just cut in the other. Another as he turns with a knife in his hand upsets a glass on the table. Another sets his hands on the table and looks on. Another whistles through his mouthful. Another leans forward to see the speaker shading his eyes with his hand. Another draws back, behind the one leaning forward, and sees the speaker between the wall and the person bending down. (Codex Forster II, fols. 62v, 63r)
Christ Giovan Conte [a condottiere from Tuscany], who works for the Cardinal of Mortaro. Giovannina has a fantastic face and lives at Santa Caterina, at the hospital. (Codex Forster II, fol. 2r)
Alessandro Carissimo of Parma for the hand of Christ. (Codex Forster II, fol. 6r)
The artist wanted to tackle the well-explored topic of The Last Supper from a psychological angle; and he imagines how the scene might appear if a sensational announcement was made unexpectedly during a meal, and how it would provoke astonishment among the guests. He may perhaps have studied moments like this at court festivities, and he undoubtedly prefigures a language of gestures that can tell the story, transforming this episode of the gospels, which is generally summarized by a convivial image, into a genuine narrative. It is true that another Tuscan artist, Ghirlandaio, whom Vasari describes as also being part of Verrocchio’s workshop, had tried to animate the scene of The Last Supper by grouping the figures in unusual ways around the table and trying to make the gestures appear natural. But Leonardo goes much further: the naturalness he sought was not one of physical congruity, but rather one where the psychology worked. This was a step forward even from the studies made for the Adoration of the Magi, where he had attempted to represent the wonder, joy and amazement of a crowd of people from different social backgrounds when they were faced with the revelation of the divine. The tenderness of the Madonna, the regal composure of the Magi, the excited amazement of the young men and the unseemly sense of marvel of the old are all present. In The Last Supper Leonardo wanted the images to talk to the viewer and to confide their thoughts simply through facial expressions and hands. ‘Another twisting the fingers of his hands, turns with stern brows to his companion. Another with his hands spread open, shows his palms and shrugs his shoulders up to his ears, opening his mouth in astonishment’ (Codex Forster II, fols. 62v–63r).
After placing his characters, just as a director would do with the actors and as he himself had done at the court festivities, Leonardo went through all the people he actually knew in real life, in an attempt to associate them to particularly significant faces – or even hands, especially because the latter acquired special importance in the play of hand gestures used to define a temperament or, more precisely, a character. We imagine, for example, that the beautiful Giovannina, whom he had seen at Santa Caterina and whose face he admired, might have been the ideal model for Saint John on the right hand of Christ – who, according to an ancient tradition that continued to be used even in later paintings, looked like a young adolescent, a fact that later gave rise to popular fantasies regarding the presence of a woman beside Christ.
Leonardo’s note, whose laconic nature gives it a ring of truth, allows us to look deep into his creative process at this time. It seems to be apparent that, alongside radically innovative elements, others still persisted from the fifteenth-century tradition. On the one hand, the idea of a painting that expresses psychological emotion is very modern: it grew out of the studies on physiognomy that Leonardo had undertaken a decade earlier and, more generally, it projects artistic creation towards new goals. On the other hand, the use of real figures as models for the painting highlights a form of naturalism that still held Leonardo in thrall, while other artists were already questioning it at around the same time.
The idea that nature alone could be the mistress of art is constantly underlined in the treatise on painting on which the artist was working at this time. Nature was the only mistress of art and imitation of nature was a safe guarantee of successful representation. Singling out the subjects to be copied – the condottiere Giovan Conte for the figure of Christ, but with the hands of Alessandro Carissimo of Parma – was a collation process that reflects a very old, certainly fifteenth-century idea. Michelangelo, Raphael and the artists of the following generation would reject this procedure and turn to a creativity that focused entirely on the artist’s imagination, taking its cue from nature but superseding it through artistic talent. When Raphael was asked how he could have imagined his Galatea twenty years after Leonardo’s Last Supper, he would say that, not having found a woman who satisfied him, he had blended together the beauty of several, in order to reach what would later be termed an ‘ideal beauty’ that exceeded natural beauty. Michelangelo, on the other hand, who was also interested in ideal beauty and psychological expression, would never have used a precise model for inspiration and his anatomy studies, as detailed as Leonardo’s if not even more, sought to attain a perfect knowledge of the human body that he would never imitate but rather transform and modify, in sculpture and painting, in order to make it more expressive and beautiful.
In its own way The Last Supper represents a high point of fifteenthcentury art, but it is still constrained by that figurative culture weighted down by the need to imitate nature. Only later, when he came into contact with the new generations, did Leonardo become convinced that the path to perfect artistic representation was not through nature but through a more complex transformative process. For the time being, we see him walking, notebook in hand, through a city on edge because of the presence of the French troops at its gates and spying on faces, poses, expressions and details that he could isolate and reuse in his theatre – because this is how he saw it: the table of The Last Supper is not a table with the figures seated around it but rather a stage on which the Apostles are lined up on one side, giving the spectator a better view. Leonardo’s search for models on the streets of Milan raised eyebrows because such an eccentric figure certainly did not pass unobserved, and even 50 years later a Milanese writer, Giovambattista Giraldi Cintio, was able to describe the event in such vivid detail that it gives even more emphasis and truth to the words hastily scribbled by Leonardo in the Codex Forster:
When he [Leonardo] wished to paint some figure, he would first consider its quality and nature: that is, whether noble or plebeian, joyful or severe, troubled or serene, old or young, angry or peaceful, good or evil; and then, having understood the figure’s nature, he would go to those places where he knew persons of that kind congregated and he carefully observed their faces, manners, clothing and bodily movements; and when he found what fitted his purpose, he noted it using a stylus [stile] in a little book that he always carried in his belt. After repeating this procedure again and again and being satisfied with the material he collected for the image that he wished to paint, he would proceed to give it shape, and he would succeed marvellously. And, given that he did this in all of his works, he did it with his customary diligence in that panel he was painting in Milan, in the monastery of the preaching friars, in which he painted our Redeemer with his disciples at table.23
The process described by Giraldi is also echoed in several passages from Leonardo’s treatise on painting, the Libro della pittura, where we also find other ways of getting the best results from this kind of study, for example by sketching people when the light is not too strong at sunset. But Giraldi’s lapsus when he refers to The Last Supper by calling it a ‘panel’ brings us to what was the real problem for Leonardo. Although he showed off in every possible way when it came to his imitation of nature, we now know for certain that, for him, the real creative process took place during the compositional phase of the painting when, while working on the chiaroscuro and before any colour was even applied, those effects that gave expression to the pictorial narrative slowly started to emerge. In this respect the panel of the Adoration of the Magi is a veritable manifesto of Leonardo’s creative technique, and we can imagine his difficulties in approaching instead a mural painting of considerable size.
The wall to be painted measures 460 × 880 cm, approximately 40 m2, and it was impossible to think that a panel could cover this size. The only possible wall-painting technique was fresco, but for Leonardo fresco imposed an insoluble constraint: the speed of its execution. In fresco painting the colour has to be applied on fresh plaster before it starts the necessary drying process, which generally lasts for a day. This is why the sections of the painting are known as giornate [days]. For the same reason, once the plaster has been applied, it has to be painted swiftly, or else the size of the giornata section must be reduced; but this presents the risk that, when these sections get dry, the chromatic tones will be different.
Nothing could be more alien to Leonardo than this procedure. For him, the most creative phase of painting started when the scene was reproduced life-size and he would start working on the chiaroscuro, watching it develop, as if it were a real model in which things happened: for instance, over time, the minute gradations of light and shade slowly changed the expression on a face or the melancholic mood of a landscape. Leonardo took ages, working at a very slow rate: where another artist would have taken at most two months, Leonardo needed at least two years. Moreover, his sfumato effects were created using layer on layer of transparent glazes [velature], something that in fresco painting was impossible. When the pigment dissolved in water is applied, it is absorbed into the uppermost porous layer of the plaster and prevents any subsequent layers from entering the saturated plaster. When painting a fresco, one has to create the impression of transparency with heavily diluted colours; but, since repeated layers of colours are impossible, Leonardo used pigment dissolved in oil.
Leonardo’s very slow technique for The Last Supper has also been described by a contemporary witness: the writer Matteo Bandello, who saw him at work throughout the period when the monks (and even Ludovico) despaired of his slowness. But behind this lengthy procedure was hidden Leonardo’s search for a perfect imitation of nature.
He used to go early in the morning, as I have seen and watched him do on many occasions, and climb up onto the scaffold, because the Last Supper is quite high off the ground; as I said, he used to spend the whole day, from dawn until dusk, with his brush in his hand, forgetting to eat or drink while he painted without a break. Then two, three or four days would arrive when he never lifted a hand, just standing there, one or two hours a day, contemplating, considering and examining, as he judged his figures. I have also seen him (depending on whim or inspiration) setting off when the sun was at its strongest, at midday, from the old court where he was working on that stupendous clay horse, and coming straight to the Grazie; and climbing onto the scaffold, he would take up the brush, give one or two brushstrokes to one of the figures, and then immediately go off somewhere else.24
Bandello’s testimony, which perfectly captures Leonardo’s timing and way of working, defies even Leonardo himself and his theory of natural imitation, which he flaunted everywhere. Far from being a process of imitation, Leonardo’s was a creative process that stemmed entirely from the workings of his own mind. Painting was a living work that the artist would imagine changing even when he was away from it (in the old courtyard), and even from afar it continued to work within him, suggesting alterations that he would hurry to fix with rapid brushstrokes. Nothing could be more modern than this creative process, or more distant from the imitation of nature. Leonardo could collect all the real-life sketches he wanted, but what he then fixed in the painting was exclusively his mental sensations; in this he did not differ from a contemporary abstract painter.
Being well aware that he needed such lengthy preparation times, Leonardo could have used dry fresco techniques, which had already been successfully tested, above all in Florence; but, once again, he wanted to experiment with new technologies. He prepared the wall using a gesso prepared with wax and pitch, which he thought would allow him to use the oil-based pigments, just as he did in panel painting. At first the effect was marvellous, and the conquering French king, Louis XII, was so struck that he asked whether he could detach the painting from the wall and take it back to France! Reluctantly he was obliged to leave it in the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie, where it then rapidly started to deteriorate, revealing the tragic limitations of Leonardo’s experimental technique. Once again, like Icarus, his mind had soared too far, too fast, over-reliant on his speculative techniques. In 1515, barely 20 years after it was finished, the painting was admired by Antonio de Beatis, secretary to Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona, who disconsolately recorded its rapid deterioration. Today, after the challenging restoration undertaken by Pinin Brambilla between 1990 and 2005, we can again get an idea of what the painting must have looked like, but considerable reserve needs to be exercised because the effects of the restoration, while highlighting important sections of the original painting, undoubtedly interfere with the overall legibility of the work, leaving us to guess at its greatness rather than see it in full.
Leonardo did not imagine the scene very differently from earlier artists like Ghirlandaio: making skilful use of fake architectural features, Leonardo inserted the table scene into the real architecture, extending it by means of perspective with a rectangular hall that opens at the end into windows through which the countryside can be glimpsed. The table is brought right to the front, to the edge of the wall, and the disciples are seated on the inner side of the table, so that no one creates an awkward effect by not facing the room. They all sit in groups of three, which breaks the uniformity of the row, and by talking together they express their individual reactions to Christ’s words: ‘Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me’ (Matthew 26.21).
The Lord’s words trigger a different reaction from each disciple. Bartholomew, on the far left of the table, stands up and leans towards Christ – who is seated in the centre – almost as if he cannot believe his own ears and wants to draw closer to the master who has just uttered them. Beside him, James the younger and Andrew throw up their hands in surprise and also look towards Christ. Peter’s reaction is even more extreme: he leans over to whisper in the ear of the beautiful but wretched-looking young disciple, John, as if he wanted to hear confirmation of those words. As he leans towards John, Peter grasps his knife, ready to do battle against anyone who would commit the offence that Christ has just announced; and in doing so he thrusts forward Judas, whose right hand clasps to his chest the pouch containing the money he has just received in exchange for his betrayal. Judas’ face is the least visible, owing to the strong foreshortening, almost as if Leonardo felt that the sentiments of the man who betrayed Christ could never be gauged. This foreshortening, now made even more dramatic by the loss of colour, is the same as appears in the preparatory cartoon in Windsor [Plate 39], an indication that this was a choice that Leonardo made immediately. Moreover, in the beautiful drawing, the choice to leave the traitor’s expression undefined is highlighted by the artist’s deliberate concentration on the anatomical details of the neck muscles rather than on the actual physiognomy.
In the centre of the scene, Christ, isolated by the light of the window behind him, appears in full frontal pose, spreading his arms in a gesture of resignation and looking down at the table in order not to give the impression of denouncing the traitor, whom he already knows. Christ knows that his destiny must be accomplished and does not want to hinder it in any way. The figure is imposing in its own way, with the blue cloak draped across half of his upper body and his head slightly bowed, although not enough to hide the lips, which remain slightly apart as they pronounce the words. Christ’s self-possessed face is perhaps the most successful outcome of Leonardo’s scientific study of physiognomy, because it shows the restrained, placid expression of a man announcing his capture and subsequent crucifixion without indignation or dramatic emphasis. Jesus’ composure reveals his divine nature, in stark contrast with the emotions that surge like a breaking wave among all the other companions.
While Christ remains immobile, like a rock that withstands breakers in a rough sea, the scene is even more chaotic on his left. Thomas, James the Elder and Philip are entwined in a single impetuous wave of astonishment. James pulls back, open-armed, while Philip stands up and in his haste shoves his right elbow into James’s shoulder. Behind them Thomas can be seen pointing upwards, as if perhaps to put himself forward to punish the traitor. Separated from this group by the outstretched arm of Matthew, who points towards Jesus with both hands, Taddeo tries to explain what is going on to Simon, who is seated at the end of the table holding his hands in a questioning gesture.
The long table, covered in a white linen tablecloth embroidered in a blue pattern typical of Flemish linen, represents a hiatus, a luminous underpinning for the scene, constantly referring the viewer to what is happening beyond it. Plates, glasses, cutlery and food – all now barely visible – are set out on the white linen and, in turn, represent a painting within a painting, attaining a perfection of detail that heralds the Flemish still-life compositions of the following century. Thanks to the stronger composition of the white pigment used for the tablecloth, the restoration here has achieved miraculous results and has recovered virtuoso naturalistic details never seen before. A case in point is the transparency of the half-empty glass of wine in front of Philip, which allows the tablecloth to be glimpsed through the glass as well as Thomas’ left hand and the lights glimmering on the edges. Below the table the painting is now virtually unreadable, but it is possible to make out the feet of the apostles that form an intricate and interwoven pattern, as shown in sixteenth-century copies of the painting.
The scene is harmoniously resolved, even if it lacks that naturalness that Leonardo himself praised so fulsomely in theory. The space beyond the table is too narrow for all the figures to sit down and eat together, and the setting only makes sense in view of these complex and interwoven groups of figures. Here spatial coherence is brilliantly overcome by pictorial artifice, and Leonardo demonstrates once again that art cannot be limited to mimesis but rather aspires to a more complex depiction of individual psychological reactions by forcing naturalism and realism.
Even the simplified geometric layout used to divide the scene fails to diminish the expressive force of the painting. Faithful to the principles of geometry, which he clings to like a man drowning in the complexities of the universe, Leonardo singles out of this group of thirteen men the figure of Christ, whom he places in the centre, dividing the other twelve by four in order to obtain rigorously observed groups of three. Also, in this composition the artist oscillates between stringent mathematical control and visionary creative intuition. In stylistic terms, and regardless of the deteriorated surface, the painting still allows us to appreciate the delicate passages of light over faces and clothing. The colours of the garments, all of which conform to a simplified style that Leonardo himself would describe as ‘a classical fashion’ [una foggia all’antica], do not vary much, the mantles being predominantly blue. This helps to concentrate attention on the sequence of gestures.