The Last Supper

It is difficult for us to understand contemporary enthusiasm for the monument. Apart from the fact that it no longer exists, we can hardly believe that the model of a walking horse, however large and well contrived, could have given Leonardo the opportunity of displaying that gift of poetical evocation which seems to us the peculiar beauty of his work. But to the Renaissance, who valued his mastery of the means of expression more, perhaps, than the spirit expressed, the mere size of the horse was an impressive achievement. A great mass of inert matter had been given form and life. Moreover, he had established for the animal, which was second only to man in importance and "nobility", a canon of perfection. His studies of the ideal proportion of the horse were known to his contemporaries, and seemed to invest his model with that final authority which the Renaissance hoped to find in a union of antique art and mathematics. All this we can hardly realise from the few surviving drawings for the Sforza memorial: but when, twenty years later, Leonardo returned to the problem with the design for a monument to Marshal Trivulzio, we can follow in a relatively large series of drawings some of the calculations by which he strove for perfection.

We have now reached what is commonly held to be the central point of Leonardo's career, the Last Supper. It is a point at which the student of Leonardo must hesitate, appalled at the quantity of writing which this masterpiece has already evoked, and at the unquestionable authority of the masterpiece itself. And almost more numbing than this authority is its familiarity. How can we criticise a work which we have all known from childhood? We have come to regard Leonardo's Last Supper more as a work of nature than a work of man, and we no more think of questioning its shape than we should question the shape of the British Isles on the map. Before such a picture the difficulty is not so much to analyse our feelings as to have any feelings at all. Yet if a direct aesthetic approach has become almost impossible, something may be gained by looking at it in close relation to Leonardo's work as a whole. A famous masterpiece is too often studied in isolation, and even a bare recital of facts may provoke some fresh speculations.

The Last Supper was painted at the command of Ludovico il Moro for the refectory of the Convent of Dominican friars at Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. It was probably begun in 1495, but the archives of the convent have been destroyed and our meagre documents date from 1497 when the painting was nearly finished. On 29 June in that year the Duke sent a memorandum to his secretary Marchesino Stanga, asking him to order Leonardo the Florentine to finish the work begun in the refectory of the Grazie and then to see to the other end wall of the refectory. This implies that work on the Last Supper was far advanced; and Pacioli, in the dedication of his Divina Proportione, dated 9 February 1498, speaks of it as if it had been completed. In compensation for the dearth of documents, we have several accounts of the work by eyewitnesses, including one by the novelist, Bandello, which, familiar as it is, I must quote again, for nothing else gives such a vivid idea of Leonardo at work.

Many a time (he says) I have seen Leonardo go early in the morning to work on the platform before the Last Supper; and there he would stay from sunrise till darkness, never laying down the brush, but continuing to paint without eating or drinking. Then three or four days would pass without his touching the work, yet each day he would spend several hours examining it and criticising the figures to himself. I have also seen him, when the fancy took him, leave the Corte Vecchia when he was at work on the stupendous horse of clay, and go straight to the Grazie. There, climbing on the platform, he would take a brush and give a few touches to one of the figures: and then suddenly he would leave and go elsewhere.