Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper

Sophia Baete

The piece that has inspired my final project for Professor Greta Berman’s course on Art from the Renaissance is Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. It took Leonardo da Vinci approximately three years to complete this piece from 1495 to 1497. My rendition, however, took around a week to complete. There were quite a few interesting elements about this piece that caught my attention, leading me to create my own rendition. Not only is the piece located at the end of the refectory of the Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, but it is also one of the only pieces in the church to survive the second world war. The way in which Leonardo da Vinci has been able to capture this astonishing moment shared between Jesus and his apostles is truly brilliant.

When looking at this piece, I am almost able to actually hear Jesus say, “one of you will betray me”. The body language and expressions being communicated by the apostle’s aids in this piece feeling even more like a snapshot taken from real life. It is this level of expression that Leonardo da Vinci created in this piece that led me to my own personal interpretation. I was so excited to create my own version of The Last Supper, however, the idea of recreating a piece like this became a bit daunting. I debated different ideas until one of them finally stood out, pivoting my work in a completely new direction. Instead of being inspired by the technicalities of the painting itself, I decided to take inspiration from what the piece communicated to me. The phrase that kept echoing in my mind was “one of you will betray me”. While Leonardo da Vinci was talented enough to convey this message with the simple use of his skills, I needed to take a more literal, yet abstract approach. Through using a technique like calligram, I was able to channel all of my own ideas into this already historically trademarked piece. By utilizing the actual words to make the art, I felt that I was envisioning this piece in a way that spoke to my own artistry. For example, to color in pieces such as the walls, I wrote the word “wall” over and over again. However, for the apostles, I did some of my own research finding actual quotes from the bible as well as coming up with my own phrase reactions of what I thought they would say to Jesus.

As a vocalist, the sole method of my artistic communication relies on words. I find it so incredible that I was able to take my method of art and apply it to a famous painting created in the Renaissance. In addition to this idea, I found that my artistic journey for this project was able to somewhat parallel the process of restoration that this piece experienced over the years. I had never thought about the responsibility and demands that a restoration/recreation, especially of a piece to this degree, would require. I wasn’t even restoring the original painting, yet I felt an immense amount of pressure to deliver a product that lived up to the original piece's potential. The pressure, the expectation, and the work itself is enough to truly test a person's creative ability. Overall, this project not only taught me about the connections to be made across all art mediums, but also the challenges that come with restoring/creating something inspired by a timeless piece like The Last Supper.