Leonardo: The Last Supper Unveiled

by Pietro C. Marani

English, Italian and French.

143 pages, Paperback

Published February 13, 2012

About the author

Pietro Cesare Marani is an Italian art historian and curator. He is among the leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci having written of over 200 publications on the artist. These include book-length studies on the Portrait of a Musician and The Last Supper, an overview on Leonardo's time in Venice, and one of the two modern catalogue raisonné of Leonardo's works, the other being by Frank Zöllner.
He is currently a professor of art history at the Polytechnic University of Milan.

Reviews

[Kalliope · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book in the gift shop in Santa Maria delle Grazie after we exited the refectory where Leonardo’s fresco still survives. In today’s world of large tourist migrations, accessing to such protected places is complicated and limited.

The damage that the fresco has endured--partly Leonardo’s responsibility, partly that of the long string of subsequent restorers (the first took place only a few decades after the fresco was finished), as well as wars and the inclemency of the weather--make it very difficult to look at this dim painting. The tourist is now limited to about a fifteen minutes visit.

I was glad therefore to pick up this book, which was published upon completion of the last restoration in 1999, on my way out after such short viewing. The book provides, mostly, a wealth of high quality reproductions. As most of them are close ups, it is a gift to my mind since my eyes had not been able to approach the painting to such a degree when still in the Refectory.

It also contains a couple of texts by Marani, printed in three languages (Italian, English and French). One of them is more general on Leonardo and the Cenacolo while the other takes a more historiographical approach to the afterlife of the fresco.

What struck me the most about the Last Supper was the spatial hiatus between Jesus and Saint John. Usually the young apostle is shown leaning on the shoulder of the Saviour, but in Leonardo’s version, John pulls sharply back. Marani emphasizes that the novelty is that Leonardo shows the exact moment just after Christ has announced that he is going to be betrayed. What we see is the emotive and agitated reaction to such a horrifying disclosure.

Marani also stresses the colourful effect and the quality of minute detail that the ‘fresco’, which was painted ‘a tempera’ as well, would have had when it was finished. That is all lost now and can only try and imagine it conjuring up all our creative powers, or look at one copy executed in oil just over two decades after the Della Grazie painting, by Andrea Solari as seen at the heading of this review)

This book also includes at the end a fascinating anthology of texts that have mentioned this fresco in later times. The authors range from Vasari (to be expected); to the partly witness Matteo Bandello (the short story teller who provided the source for much 17C European drama); to Pieter Paul Rubens; to more ‘modern’ writers such as Goethe, Rilke, Théophile Gautier and Henry James.

Reading through these was both intimidating and rewarding. It made me feel that I, too, belonged to an on-going audience of admirable admirers.

I am not including any further illustrations in this review because the web does not have close ups of such quality. Hence the value of this book.