The Last Supper
by Leonardo da Vinci in the Church of Santa María de las Gracias
The
Last Supper is a mural painting and one of Leonardo Da Vinci's best-known and
most important works, which is in the refectory of the Dominican convent and
church of Santa Maria degli Graciosa, Milan, considered a World Heritage Site
(Unesco) .
The
painting is based on the Gospel of Saint John, it represents the moment in
which Jesus announces the betrayal of one of his apostles. In the figure,
Leonardo placed in the foreground the long table of the dinner, in whose center
Christ appears; around him are the apostles arranged in four groups of three,
different but balanced symmetrically. The perspective and the distribution of
the characters guide the look and create the impression of participating in the
scene and living this decisive moment.
Leonardo
da Vinci, between 1495 and 1498, made the mural with the technique of tempera
on plaster, to have greater freedom of execution and creativity; However, this
technique has not withstood the climatic changes of temperature and humidity,
creating considerable problems for conservation. It measures 460 cm high by 880
cm wide; Many experts and historians of art consider "The Last
Supper" as one of the best paintings in the world. For modern artists it
is a "talking" painting.
Time
showed that the technique used and the environment influenced the deterioration
of the fresco, which has been restored many times. In the most recent
restoration of 1999, several scientific methods were used to restore the
original colors and, if possible, to eliminate the traces of paint applied in
previous attempts to restore the mural.
In
1943, the Anglo-American bombings damaged the church and the convent, the
refectory disappeared, few walls were saved, in one of them was the Last Supper
protected with sandbags.
Many
people know painting through illustrations in books or the Internet, but seeing
it in reality is already complicated, because the number of daily visitors is
restricted. Tickets to visit this popular painting can only be purchased online
and several months in advance; the price of the ticket is 10 euros, with an
additional payment of 2 euros per reservation. You can pay 3.50 euros more for
a guided tour. I think that the visit to Milan without seeing this magnificent
work is an incomplete trip. The drawback: the visit only lasts 15 minutes and
you can not take pictures.
The
church and the mural became very popular a few years ago with the book
"The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, and the film about the book. Dan
Brown used the interpretative possibilities of this mural to the maximum to
create his work and achieved, in addition to millions in sales, the increase in
visits to the convent.
Link to related topics
La Gioconda or Monalisa, how many versions are there?
References
La Última
Cena de Leonardo
Dónde ver "La Última Cena"
de Leonardo da Vinci, 2 julio 2009
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