Hoàng Minh Phương – 10E2

The Last Supper – by Leonardo Da Vinci

The Last Supper is Leonardo's visual interpretation of an event chronicled in all four of the
Gospels (books in the Christian New Testament). The evening before Christ was betrayed by one
of his disciples, he gathered them together to eat, tell them he knew what was coming and wash
their feet (a gesture symbolizing that all were equal under the eyes of the Lord). As they ate and
drank together, Christ gave the disciples explicit instructions on how to eat and drink in the
future, in remembrance of him. It was the first celebration of the Eucharist, a ritual still
performed.

Specifically, The Last Supper depicts the next few seconds in this story after Christ dropped the
bombshell that one disciple would betray him before sunrise, and all twelve have reacted to the
news with different degrees of horror, anger, and shock.

Leonardo hadn't worked on such a large painting and had no experience in the standard mural
medium of fresco. The painting was made using experimental pigments directly on the dry
plaster wall and unlike frescos, where the pigments are mixed with the wet plaster, it has not
stood the test of time well. Even before it was finished there were problems with the paint
flaking from the wall and Leonardo had to repair it. Over the years it has crumbled, been
vandalized bombed and restored. Today we are probably looking at very little of the original.
Much of the recent interest in the painting has centered on the details hidden within the painting,
but in directing attention to these 'hidden' details, most people miss the incredible sense of
perspective the work displays. The sharp angling of the walls within the picture, which leads
back to the seemingly distant back wall of the room and the windows that show the hills and sky
beyond. The type of day shown through these windows adds to the feeling of serenity that rests
in the center of the piece, around the figure of Christ.

My own experience: When I read the book: “Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown or watched the
film transferred from this book, there was a detail related to the picture: the Last Supper. It was
assumed that there is a woman in the picture, not like as most of people thought that in the
picture saw all the men. If you noticed, the one who stood next to Jesus on the left hand side is
the mentioned woman. Actually it was Mary Magdalene, and deeply noticed, her gesture
compared to Jesus’s created the shape of the Grail. And many people had made much effort to
find where was the Grail, in which Mary’s corpse was bullied.