About Leonardo's Last Supper continued

III. LAST SUPPER – ABOUT THE PAINTING/THE APOSTLES

Leonardo is following tradition long-established, since, perhaps, the sixth century, with the apostles gathered around the table. And it goes through a variety of permutations, as you might imagine over the course of those centuries. He adopts a Florentine tradition, basically, of assembling the apostles on the opposite side of the table, and there are well known examples that we can cite. Others had painted these last suppers that are not dissimilar, but it’s the way in which Leonardo arranged his figures that’s quite novel, because the twelve apostles are grouped in three’s, and each group becomes kind of an independent unit on either side of Christ, so Christ himself, is a pivotal unit, triangular in his positions with his hands down, blessing and so forth, and then you have the apostles on either side in their units, responding to what is happening.

Some people say that the apostles are responding to Christ’s words: “One of you will betray me.”  There are a number of other possibilities as well.  As a consequence of this statement you have a twelve-fold reflex, kind of like a fugue, “Lord, is it I?, Lord is it I? Lord is it I?” and they gesture and they move and they talk and Peter leans forward, “What’s going on?”  All of that kind of thing is happening; it’s very, very complicated and no one had ever done that before.  And so he’s thinking about the individual personalities; every apostle is a person, and each person responds differently, and this is quite novel and remarkable, actually, for the year 1498 when it was finished.

The figure of John the Evangelist in traditional representations of the Last Supper  show him usually leaning on Christ’s shoulder.  That had been the tradition for quite some time, but Leonardo changes that and, as I said earlier, the groupings of apostles are now placed in these groups of three’s so John isn’t leaning against Christ. He’s leaning a bit off to the side.  And he’s identifiable by the androgyny of his character. 

Peter is leaning forward and pulling John by the shoulder and probably asking him, “What did he say?”  I think that’s what’s happening, and – which is unusual –  Leonardo is considering the independent actions of every individual and each one responds to his own way of experiencing that moment.

There are a number of possibilities about what Peter might be asking, and it’s pure speculation. One can ask of each of the apostles, “What are they really saying?” since the gospels don’t tell us what they’re saying.  It leaves it up to us do decide how we want to interpret the actions of the apostles and what they might be saying.

The gesture that Peter makes is two gestures actually, one is clutching the knife in one hand, the other hand reaches over to the shoulder of John the Evangelist.

Peter is shown as he had been since probably the 12th century, clutching a knife because the knife is now identifying him, an attribute Peter had when the apostles and Christ were in the garden and Christ was being captured to be taken away by the soldiers, Peter grabs a knife to cut off the ear of Malchus and that is the way to identify Peter.  It would be foolish to identify Peter with a set of keys in his hand as he’s often shown because it’s out of the context of the Passion of Christ.  So that’s the reason for the connection of the knife.

In The Da Vinci Code novel, as I recall, Peter is clutching a knife as if he’s going to attack Mary Magdalene because he loses his primacy as the first of the apostles.  From an iconographic point of view that doesn’t make any sense in the context of the narrative.

I think St. Andrew is one of the most beautiful figures in the composition. He is holding his hands up and responds with absolute astonishment. It’s a very elegant figure.   

It’s interesting the way Leonardo does characterize these various gestures because everyone is moving except Judas.  Judas, grabbing his bag of silver, identifying him as the betrayer, the traitor, actually leans his body back so that he’s shown to be not responding as the others are and that’s an interesting way of doing it, in fact, a most unusual way because in early representations, Judas is always shown on our side of the table so that he’s separated out from the other apostles and we clearly understand that this is the betrayer.  Leonardo includes him in that compositional group [with Peter and John] but his body pulls back. That too is a very beautiful idea. 

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