The last supper.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s , The last supper.

Leonardo Da Vinci triumphed in using perspective as illusion. He make it seems as though the room extending into the painting, it then continues into the windows and the landscape. 

He uses chiascuro which is the contrast between light and shadows. He uses this technique in the people or subjects in his painting of the last supper to make them appear as though they are in our world today as if they are right next to us. He used light and shadowing on Jesus and also on Judas to bring focus on them to show their relationship and the things to come. He highlighted Christ by placing Him by the window by using a clear sky and blue shades to convey almost a halo around his head. The window also helped to bring in “natural “light to highlight Jesus. The landscape was used as signifying “paradise” and that the only way to achieve going to paradise would be through Christ.

Shading was used on Judas almost degrading him by darkening his face with shadows and using his clothing with a color that is not as expensive as the pigment that was used on Christ and a few of the other disciples. 

Da Vinci has been stated as a genius for his way of capturing the emotions and also the physical likeness in his paintings. He has complex faces as the subtext in a parallel form to draw attention to his main subject. Almost to show what is going on in his subject mind.

Da Vinci uses lines of perspective with asymmetrical symmetry in the last supper. Lines were used to frame Christ in the door frame so that our eyes will be drawn to Him. The line of perspective is used to radiate from Christ’s head, signifying that He is the main focal point. These same lines of perspective blend in with the ceilings and walls.

The first line that I saw that drew my attention was the line used in the table, drawing your eyes to the main idea of the painting of Christ in the center and His disciples extending to the sides of the painting. Christ is at the center of his painting signifying that he is the main subject and the center, the point where all lines and attention will converge. Da Vinci then used his knowledge of architecture and geometry to map out the remaining of the painting.

Da Vinci uses foreshadowing in his painting with Peter. Peter is holding a knife in his right hand that will later used to cut the ear off of a soldier that is trying to arrest Christ.  He also used balanced composition by anchoring with an equilateral triangle and Christ’s body like the Renaissance in Neo-Platonism.

 Da Vinci has been labeled as the Renaissance man. He was great at everything. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, , scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, cartographer, botanist,  and a writer. He was the epitome of the Renaissance man with his humanist ideal and he had an “Unquenchable curiosity” and a “feverish inventive imagination”. He was the most diverse person to live.

He used a renewed interest with his knowledge of art and the classical world with something new to be his own work to resemble his individualism. This was a way to rebel against the medieval emphasis that oneness of everyone in heaven with a promise of everlasting life, rather than the belief of a rich diversity of life in this world.