Lenten Reflection #38
As the world continues to keep a six-foot distance from one another, the commemoration of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, Holy Thursday’s Mass, was streamed online this year.
As I stared up at a copy of the famous artwork by Leonardo Da Vinci given to me by my grandmother, I noticed the lack of personal space between the apostles. Honestly, why didn’t anyone sit on the other side of the table? But in all seriousness, this masterpiece depicts the moments after Christ let his chummy crew KNOW-HE-KNEW that one disciple would betray him before sunrise.
We all find ourselves in that space sometimes. That skeptical time when our trust in ourselves and others circle the drain and our own Judas or Coronavirus creeps into our world. But Jesus didn’t lose hope, and we shouldn’t either.
Keep your faith strong and know we’ll get through this time. Pray for the souls lost and do your part to not let the spread continue. And for goodness sake tell all the Judas’ in the world to scoot over because they are sitting WAY to close.
In my research of the painting, I found a few rare facts about this stellar painting on leonardodavinci.net to share:
- Leonardo Da Vinci hadn’t worked on such a large painting and had no experience in the standard mural medium of fresco.
- The spilled salt is symbolic – speculations about symbolism in the artwork are plentiful. For example, many scholars have discussed the meaning of the spilled salt container near Judas’s elbow. Spilled salt could symbolize bad luck, loss, religion, or Jesus as the salt of the earth.
- Was it eel or herring? Scholars have also remarked on da Vinci’s choice of food. They dispute whether the fish on the table is herring or eel since each carries its own symbolic meaning.
- Da Vinci used a hammer and nail to help him to achieve a one-point perspective. What makes the masterpiece so striking is the perspective from which it’s painted, which seems to invite the viewer to step right into the dramatic scene. To achieve this illusion, da Vinci hammered a nail into the wall, then tied a string to it to make marks that helped guide his hand in creating the painting’s angles.
- The existing mural is not da Vinci’s work. At the end of the 20th century, restorer Panin Brambilla Barcilon and his crew relied on microscopic photographs, core samples, infrared reflectoscopy and sonar to remove the added layers of paint and restore the original as accurately as possible. Critics maintain that only a fraction of the painting that exists today is the work of Leonardo da Vinci.