SPECIAL EDITION: The Last Supper
Tongerlo's Treasure, Last Supper
Everyone is familiar with Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting The Last Supper which is a mural in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. The subject of The Last Supper was actually a fairly common and oft requested subject for refectory murals. Usually the painting would celebrate the establishment of the Eucharist.
But Da Vinci was a creative genius and he often broke free from the constraints of convention. He chose to paint the moment that Jesus announces “one of you will betray me!” Leonardo’s mastery of composition and geometry creates a tension in the room you can cut with a knife. The figure of Judas is pulled into the drama by Leonardo’s chiaroscuro. The painting is amazing.
Unfortunately, the painting is mostly gone, destroyed by moisture from the kitchen behind it and desecrated with a doorway cut into it. Leonardo also departed from another convention; that of fresco, where an artist paints into wet plaster. Instead, he painted in the relatively new medium of oil. Leonardo loved oil. He developed his signature sfumato technique because oil allowed him to. Unfortunately there was little knowledge of surface adhesion. The paint eventually separated from the wall and now all that is left is a restoration of a fraction of Da Vinci’s original – or is it?
When King Louis XII of France invades Milan in the early 1500, he saw the recently completed mural on the refectory wall. He was so enamored of it that he made plans to crate the wall and carry it back to France. When that idea proved to be impractical he apparently commissioned Leonardo to create a copy and had it taken to the Chateau de Gallion. This time it was done on canvas. But it disappeared in the centuries that followed, only to be found again in Tongerlo Abbey in Belgium. An abbot had purchased it in 1645. Today it is in a small chapel on the grounds of Tongerlo Abbey.
Researchers Jean-Pierre Isabouts and Christopher Heath Brown researched the Tongerlo painting and found much evidence to suggest that this is indeed the painting that Louis XII commissioned. Though much of the work appears to have been done by Leonardo’s pupils, there are a few areas of the painting that reveal his sublime sfumato technique – notably in the face of John the Beloved Apostle.
The Tongerlo Last Supper. Leonardo da Vinci and Students.
