I. Description of the creative background:
1, painting process
The novelist Matteo Bandello was only a child in the 1990s. At that time, he was a trainee monk in the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria Thanksgiving Church in Milan, where his uncle Visenzo was the dean. Bandero often watches Leonardo da Vinci work on the north wall of the monastery to pass the time, while Leonardo da Vinci is painting a great masterpiece of the sforza period-The Last Supper.
Bandello described: Leonardo da Vinci climbed the scaffold early in the morning and began to work non-stop. Sometimes he will be there from morning till night, holding a brush in his hand. He keeps drawing and often forgets to eat and drink. Sometimes, he will stand in front of the painting for several hours a day without touching the brush for several days, with his hands crossed on his chest and looking at the characters in the painting alone with critical eyes. I also saw him put down the clay model he was making at noon when the sun was strongest, as if he had something urgent to do suddenly, and left the Vecchio Palace and went straight to Santa Maria Thanksgiving Church. He couldn't find the shade to rest for a while, so he quickly climbed onto the scaffold, picked up a brush and drew one or two strokes on the wall, then turned around and left.
Draw from the left side of the wall
To paint The Last Supper, we must first evenly coat the wall of the monastery dining room with plaster. The plaster in the middle of the wall is rougher than the plaster next to it, because it can be more firmly attached to the paint layer covering it. People found the sketch trace of The Last Supper, which was painted directly on plaster. "A very simple red line is drawn with a smooth brush, and the outline or shape of everyone is outlined according to his layout." After sketching, you should apply plaster or foundation. The gypsum powder used at that time was "a mixture of small particles, 100-200 microns thick, which was formed by binding calcium carbonate and magnesium with protein-like substances", and the top layer was coated with a thin lead-white primer. Leonardo deliberately left some cuts on the surface, mainly to outline the shape and panorama of the architectural background; In order to pursue the accuracy of the work, a small hole was made in the center of the painting area as the vanishing point of the whole mural, on the right temple of Jesus.
Oil painting probably begins with three semicircular walls engraved with heraldry on the already painted scene. Now most of them have been damaged, but fragments of the inscription, heraldry and a beautiful wreath made of fruit and grass can still be seen. The main scene of the mural is probably drawn from the left. In the words of matteo Bandlow, during this time, Leonardo has been working, sometimes crossing his arms and staring at the wall for a long time.
"I have to make a living"
1496 In the summer, Leonardo da Vinci was painting The Last Supper while decorating some rooms (probably the rooms of the Duchess Beatrice in sforza Palace). On June 8, Leonardo lost his temper, and the duke's secretary recorded: "The painter who decorated the room did something disgraceful today, so he left angrily." This tension may be related to the draft of another incomplete letter to the duke, in which Leonardo complained about his financial difficulties: "I am worried." You should find that I am short of money, and ... I have to make a living, which makes me have to interrupt this work and participate in less important affairs instead of continuing the work you entrusted. " This important work refers to the last supper.
He continued: "Maybe you didn't give Mr. Gualtiello more instructions. He thinks I have enough money ... If you think I have enough money, you must have been cheated." This refers to Gualtiello Baskapi. Some people call him "the Duke's gift judge", that is, the Duke's cashier. Leonardo doesn't seem to have received some expected "gifts": the so-called "gifts" are essentially money, so they can't be counted as salaries because they are not paid regularly. According to Bandlow, Leonardo's annual salary is 2,000 Duckett, but another well-informed source said that the Moors only pay him 500 Duckett a year.
In this letter, we can feel from one side that Leonardo was under great creative pressure when painting The Last Supper. This pressure has not been alleviated by other things, but has been increasing. This is also the same Leonardo that Bandero captured, the Leonardo who strode to Santa Maria Thanksgiving Church in a hot and quiet street.
2. Composition of exercises
One page of notes in the Royal Library of Windsor is an early writing exercise with a pen: this exercise is still based on the traditional writing method of The Last Supper-Judas did not sit with everyone, he sat on the left side of the table with his head tilted back; St. John, on the other hand, fell asleep sitting next to Jesus, in order to show that he was "leaning in Jesus' arms" when Jesus announced the news of his betrayal. Both images were discarded in the final version.
There are two relatively independent sketches on this page. There are ten characters in the sketch on the left, and some arched structures are drawn lightly behind this group. This is the earliest idea about the background of the picture, that is, the "top floor" where the "last supper" took place. There are four figures in the sketch on the right, but the focus of the picture is mainly on Jesus and Judas. Leonardo concentrated on the dramatic moment of identifying traitors here: "People who share a plate with me will betray me." Judas in the picture stands up from the stool and reaches for the plate. Leonardo tried to draw two gestures for Jesus' hand-painting-one was to raise his hands as if to reach forward; The other is that the hand has touched the plate and made a brief contact with the traitor's hand. This smaller sketch highlights the focus of the story and finds the fulcrum of the drama-the touching moment when two hands touch. In order to highlight this moment, Leonardo traced the story of the traditional "Last Supper" back to a scene before the Bible, namely the Eucharist.
The smaller sketch also depicts St. John sleeping with Jesus' arm on his back, which shows Jesus' "kindness". As written in the Bible, John is a disciple "beloved by Jesus". To skeptics who ignore religion, John's "leaning in Jesus' arms" is a sign of homosexuality. One hundred years later, among the blasphemies attributed to christopher marlowe, one was that Jesus had a "special love" for John and "regarded him as a sinner in Sodom".
Soon after, Leonardo drew a sketch with a pink brush. Later, this red brush was painted with ink by others, and now it is collected in the art museum of Venice College. The roughness of the sketch is largely due to the influence of ink, but the even layout of The Last Supper has begun to appear in this sketch. Disciples are divided into several groups, and the picture pays more attention to the personality characteristics of the characters. In order to find out the identity of the character, a scribbled explanatory text appeared under the character (Philip was mentioned twice). But Judas is still at the table near the audience, and John is still sleeping soundly.
However, there is an earlier piece of paper in Da Vinci's sketch book, which can be traced back to the 1980s of 15. There are three related sketches on it: a group of people are sitting at the table, one is sitting alone at the table, holding his head in his hands, and the other is Jesus, pointing to the destined dish. These three sketches are not The Last Supper, because only five people sit at the table and chat happily to kill time. They are not disciples of Jesus. The scene in the painting may take place at a country feast, and people are sitting around the table. But I don't know what inspired Leonardo to quickly draw the sad scene of Christ's Eucharist on the same page, and it took fifteen years to realize this idea.
3. Character prototype
The sketch emphasis of the Royal Library of Windsor and Venice has gradually shifted from the overall layout to the characteristics of individual characters. The Royal Library of Windsor collects a series of famous headshots, most of which are painted in pink, and some of them are completely painted: Judas, Peter, James the Great and St. Philip (the latter two images use the same model, but they are endowed with distinct personality characteristics in the picture). Among them, there is a picture of St. John's hand, which is beautiful; There is also an exercise with the sleeves of St. Peter painted on it. There are also some short comments in the "Foster Notebook" to supplement these exercises-an Alexander from Palma provided a prototype for Jesus' hand; Cristofano da Castiglio, who lives in Bita, has a beautiful head. One of the notes had a very simple title, which read "Jesus", and Leonardo da Vinci wrote "Giovanni Kong Di under Cardinal Motalo" below. This man may be a model of Jesus.
Some characters are reflected in the final mural, such as San Andrei with white beard (third from left) spreading his palm and hunching his shoulders. The behavior of others has changed. The man who turned around with a knife in his hand became St. Peter, and the man who knocked over the glass became another man. He is Judas who knocked over the salt shaker. At least one of these poses has appeared in the first composition sketch of the Royal Library of Windsor, that is, in a smaller group of portraits, the man between Jesus and Judas "covers his eyes with his hand".
These emotional movements, like the whole composition, reflect a brand-new idea in Leonardo's The Last Supper: he abandoned the composition tradition handed down from the Middle Ages, that is, believers sat in a straight line along the table. In The Last Supper, the lines of the diners were interrupted, which achieved magical results. We are in front of a group of people like waves. The disciples were divided into four groups, each group had three believers: these crowds of believers suddenly came to a critical juncture. Leonardo also found his dramatic moment: it was not the Eucharist, nor the confirmation of Judas' identity, but the extremely shocked reaction of everyone when he heard Jesus' announcement-"Only in front of you can I say for sure that some of you will betray me." Believers are deeply saddened. So the smooth part of the picture layout is caused by Christ's decision, that is, the story appears instantly, which is almost a scene in the movie.
Judas is the villain of this painting, but in the outline exercise for preparing the last supper (collected in the Royal Library of Windsor), Judas was even uglier than the devil, almost a monster, but he also showed some remorse and self-hatred, which also made the outline look tragic or Christian. Vasari once told an anecdote about the face of Judas: the abbot of Santa Maria Thanksgiving Church always urged Leonardo to "finish the work as soon as possible" and complained to the Duke about how the artist delayed the time. After learning about this, Leonardo told Ludovico that he was still looking for a man with an extremely sinister face as the prototype of Judas, but if he really couldn't find a suitable face, "he would definitely use the head of the abbot who was not considerate and impatient" as the model. The duke laughed. "The unfortunate abbot came home confused and worried about the workers working in his garden."
Second, a supplementary explanation about this painting:
The Last Supper was created by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, and it is the most famous work on this theme. The characters in the picture, including expressions of fear, anger, doubt and remorse, as well as gestures, eyes and behaviors, are all portrayed in detail and vividly. Collected in the monastery of San Maria do Elg in Milan.