The Last Supper Analysis

This painting consists of Squares, Rectangles and lot of implied lines. With everyone looking and/or pointing at Jesus it gives an implied line that the eye follows through the painting and keeps the focus on him. The color of the clothing gives the feel of harmony and unity.With Jesus being slightly larger than the rest it keeps him as the focal point, His position with his hands out and the accepting look on his face compared to the others which are standing and have outraged looks, Jesus’ look of acceptance could be interpreted as a sign that he understands what is to come and knows that one day his body must be divided, the broken bread, and that his blood must flow, the red wine. The light above Jesus looks like a halo which gives him the look of righteousness or holiness, almost untouchable. Everyone is gathered at the table in preparation for Jesus’ last supper here on earth before moving on.

Jesus makes the statement that someone will betray him so everyone is outraged since he didn’t say who it was. Therefore there is a deep sense of betrayal and sadness, betrayal of Jesus by Judas, in the picture Judas is hidden in the shadows and seems to be clutching a small bag, and sadness because Peter will deny him 3 times. There is also the sense of good and evil in the fact that the left side of the painting is dark and the right side is brighter. The dark left and the bright right is a symbol of those one right are favored and on the left are those that have lost favor in his sight.Mary (there are many question as to if this is John or Mary but many seem to think it is Mary because the figure looks very feminine) being on the left side of him, when women never ate with men, is a sign of disrespect and the seeing as how peter has his hand around her neck reinforces that. Even peter being on the left side show that it is the side that has lost favor with Jesus, Peter has a knife behind is back a sign of betrayal or backstabbing. Jesus has a very stable triangular form while the rest flow almost in a chaotic way.

There are a lot of icons in this painting; everything that Leonardo drew had a meaning behind it from the leaven bread to the halo above Jesus. In the bible they had unleavened bread, and there was no fish just wine and bread. The fish could symbol all the miracles that he preformed during his life. Jesus and his disciples are seating in chairs instead of reclining like what they have done during the Passover. Jesus was crucified on what we would call Friday. So this meal was a day to early for it to be the Passover and the Passover is in the evening and judging by the background scene it is early day time.The item at the bottom turns out to be a door that someone decided that that was the only place for it to be put.

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The lighting at the bottom was put there to make the room itself seem bigger, Leonardo did this on purpose. Everything he did was on purpose. There are many interpretations to some of the icons in this painting but all of them come back to a religious meaning.Work Cited: Dax, Jay, “The Last Supper- A study of the painting by Leonardo De Vinci”,://www. jaydax. co. uk/lastsupper/lastsupper.

htm. 2006. 20 sept. 2010

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