25 Years of Aladdin! (Collaboration Between Reviews and Retrospectives and Random Antix)

In celebration of Aladdin's 25th Anniversary, my good friend Joshua Edwards and I decided to make two videos paying tribute to the film and its stage adaptation! Feel free to like, comment, subscribe, and discuss your favorite Aladdin moments!

(Random Antix: A Random Arabian Night!)

(Reviews and Retrospectives The Series: Aladdin's Broadway Journey!)

The Tragic History of Leonardo's Last Supper

The Last Supper’s troubled history began in 1494, when Leonardo was under the employment of the Sforza family. Before starting on the painting, he was summoned in 1484 by the family’s patriarch, Ludovico Sforza, to create an equestrian monument for his family; “This bronze horse was the larger than life equestrian monument by which Lodovico hoped to celebrate the exploits of his late father, Francesco Sforza” (King, Leonardo and the Last Supper, 5). According to Valentino Cupiraggi, “…Leonardo presents himself as military engineer, exalting his technical expertise and, only marginally, his artistic talent. In the same letter Leonardo flatters Il Moro by promising to make an equestrian monument in honor of his father Francesco Sforza, the first Duke of Milan.” (Cupiraggi). While Leonardo attempted multiple times to create the Sforza Family Monument, he was unsuccessful in its completion since the bronze needed to create the statue was always needed elsewhere; such as “In 1494, when Charles VIII invaded Italy, Il Moro decided to send the bronze destined to Leonardo's equestrian statue to Ferrara, to be used for cannons” (Cupiraggi). Unfortunately, while the equestrian statue was mostly left unfinished due to a lack of media, Leonardo’s habits of leaving projects unfinished (such as Adoration of the Magi) was also a significant factor in the incomplete status of the commission; Leonardo also had a habit of taking on more projects than he could handle.  Meanwhile, Ludovico desired a larger monument for his family; one that would eternally immortalize his legacy and serve as a family mausoleum. To make his ambition a reality, he commissioned the legendary architect, Bramante, to renovate the Santa Maria della Grazie cathedral to accommodate the Sforzas’ massive mausoleum.

 In addition to commissioning the famed architect to build a monument for his family in the Santa Maria della Grazie, patriarch Ludovico Sforza commissioned Leonardo to create a fresco that served as the mausoleum’s centerpiece. However, according to page 47 of Ross King’s Leonardo and the Last Supper, the Dominicans (and to an extent, Sforza) considered Leonardo to be an odd person for the job; primarily because Leonardo was inexperienced in creating a fresco painting. King then states on the next page, “patrons commissioning frescoes during Leonardo’s time in Florence in the 1470s and early 1480s turned to painters such as Sandro Botticelli and Domenico Ghirlandaio.” (King, 48) Leonardo was simply the wrong artist for the job, which was a fact that would become prevalent when the painting entered production. He had no experience in painting a fresco, almost exclusively painting on canvas or wood panels, and he had a malignant habit of leaving his works unfinished. Nonetheless, Leonardo was surprisingly chosen for the commission and was given his assignment.

  Sforza and the Dominicans desired a depiction of The Last Supper from the New Testament; where Christ announced to his disciples during their last Passover meal, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me” (Matthew 21:26). Coincidentally, “Leonardo had been developing his ideas for his Last Supper for some fifteen years; in one of his sketches for the Adoration of the Magi there appears a group of servants in animated discussion at a table, and nearby is a figure of Christ. (Wallace, The World of Leonardo, 80).” Since previous depictions of the scene were murals of a massive scale, Ludovico desired the same result from Leonardo, much to the dismay of the latter (King, 50). The artist immediately began pre-production on the work by studying the gospels in a bible provided to him, notably the gospels of Matthew and John; and by sketching his concepts in his famed notebooks. One such example of these sketches can be viewed on page 86 on Wallace’s The World of Leonardo, in which one is shown a drawing of Jesus’s apostles. As shown in the sketch, each apostle is easily identified and corresponds to a figure in the final product. Other sketches have also been discovered in his notebooks that were likely used to determine the appearance and placement of the apostles. “In his notes for the painting, Leonardo enumerated several gestures he thought suitable—some he retained, others were dropped.” (Wallace, 81) By comparing the sketch to Leonardo’s final fresco, one can conclude the artist had initially planned a different arrangement of the painting’s figures.  One notable change from the preliminary plan is a figure lying face down on the table, which is notably absent in the finished product. Compared to the initial composition in the sketches, Leonardo seemingly changed the perspective of the table as well. After meticulous amounts of preproduction through the creation of sketches in his notebook, Leonardo finalized his approach to the painting. However, he required the use of models as a reference for the work. To alleviate this dilemma, he carefully searched for people across Milan to portray the apostles and the Lord. In the final work, all figures aside from Christ were based on people around Milan; however, Christ remained an abstract.

For the faces of Christ’s apostles, Leonardo meticulously recruited people around the city of Milan. However, for the face and hands of Christ, he considered two men to fit the role; “Count Giovanni, who belongs to the household of the Cardinal of Mortaro” and “Alessandro Carrissimo of Parma” (Wallace, 81). Unfortunately, his search for an appropriate Judas Iscariot was a difficult one; he spent an excessive amount of time searching for the right criminal, which evoked anger and accusations of laziness from the prior of the Santa Maria della Grazie. In response, Leonardo humorously stated “he was… having difficulty finding a Judas, but if pressed, he would use the head of the prior, which would do very nicely.” (Wallace, 81) Upon finding the perfect cast for his painting, he arranged each one around a table in the refectory with various props scattered upon it. Many of the props used in the composition were symbols alluding to the story from the New Testament, such as the salt cellar overturned by Judas; incriminating the shadowed apostle as Christ’s betrayer. Once the scene was finalized, Leonardo ascended the scaffolding and prepared himself to create his most ambitious and largest work at the time and in the entirety of his career. It would prove to be a challenge even to Leonardo himself, as the traditional method of fresco painting was “ill-suited to his manner of working” (King, 103)

            Unlike true frescos (or buon frescos) that are painted on wet plaster, Leonardo surprisingly decided to paint on a panel of dry plaster; a method known as “al secco”. King states Leonardo used this method for two reasons, the first being his lack of experience in fresco painting. His second reason was due to the limited color range he was forced to use if he had painted using the buon method. A true fresco’s color palette traditionally utilized muted hues; “many of the brightest blues and greens---ultramarine, azurite, malachite----could be added of if they were mixed with binders and applied to the plaster after it dried.” (King, 49) The quote could imply he wished to take more time and eliminate any worry about the plaster drying, so he could paint continuously and add the extravagant amount of detail he was known for. Adding to the benefits of using the al secco method, Leonardo had a larger margin for error unlike the traditional method; a buon fresco painter has a miniscule margin and must work quickly before the plaster permanently affixes to the wall. However, while the painter must work quickly to achieve a desired result, the final product is durable and lasts longer; the pigment also does not require a binder since the plaster acts as such during a process such as carbonatation. Leonardo’s media lacked the binder necessary to affix the pigment to the wall, which caused the painting to become terribly fragile. The paint Leonardo used was a combination of oil and tempera, which contained a liquid binder. He used the oil paint to achieve a higher degree of detail and luminosity in the work, and Leonardo could create a wider range of hues and value in the composition. If he wanted to make any changes, he could do so more easily and “make as many corrections as he desired” (King, 105). In addition, the oil-based pigment would not dull as it dried unlike tempera; therefore, the work would retain its vivid hues and luminous effects.  Despite Leonardo breaking the other rules of fresco painting, there was one he did follow; painting from the highest point of the work to the lowest. Before starting with the main portion of the fresco, Leonardo decided to work on the three lunettes above the painting, which represented the members of the Sforza family. Fresco artists usually paint from top to bottom as a precautionary measure, to prevent the media from dripping and ruining other portions of the work.

            Robert Wallace states in The World of Leonardo, “As it originally appeared, the Last Supper must have been incomparably beautiful—Leonardo worked not in fresco but in tempera, employing all the rich color effects the technique allows.” (Wallace, 83) Unfortunately, the medium used was not enough to permanently adhere the paint to the dry plaster, and it caused Leonardo’s largest work to become one of his largest blunders. Leonardo could have used the buon fresco method and achieved a similar result as evidenced by one of his later (and lost) works, The Battle of Anghiari. He would have also gained the added benefit of durability rather than rapid deterioration; mitigating the later necessity of restoration. Within moments of completion in 1498, The Last Supper began to rapidly deteriorate because of his method of production, along with several environmental factors. Small flakes of pigment began to detach from the wall and delicately fall to the refectory floor; a tragedy that would continue for centuries afterward.

While visiting the refectory in 1517, Antonio de Beatis commented on the picture, stating “it has begun to perish either through dampness of the wall of through some other mischance.” (David Alan Brown, 20) Further compounding the problem, the painting quickly gathered dust and was created in a humid location where significant amounts of moisture gathered.  The dust and moisture would cause more portions of the fresco to detach. By the latter half of the sixteenth century, painter Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo stated “the painting is all ruined” upon closer inspection of the work. Giorgio Vasari stated a similar opinion in 1556, noting “there is nothing visible except a muddle of blots” (Wallace, 83). According to David Alan Brown’s The Last Supper: The Restoration, “Francesco Scanelli, after carefully examining the mural, could only make out a few traces of the figures.” In 1652, soon after Scanelli analyzed the painting, the doorway had been enlarged; eliminating Christ’s feet from the work. In 1800 during the French occupation of Milan, the painting “suffered further damage when the refectory was used for storage or as a stable or barracks”. Brown also states the damage was compounded further due to “the modern problem of air pollution.” The painting was almost lost completely in 1943, during the bombing of Milan. Thankfully due to sandbagging and various measures to protect the work, it remains mostly intact; unfortunately, it suffered substantial damages. The painting’s rapidly deteriorating state was a sign of a devastating fact; The Last Supper was in desperate need of repair.

            According to Wallace, “through the centuries, since it first began to deteriorate, the wreckage of Leonardo’s masterpiece has consistently presented the most difficult problem that experts in restoration have ever faced. The Last Supper has been retouched, restored and given up for lost countless times”. Massive amounts of color and detail from Leonardo’s initial work had unfortunately been lost, such as a significant portion of Christ’s sash and James the Greater; the latter was nothing more than a head and hands. Surprisingly, the apostles Bartholomew and Andrew faced the least amount of damage, still retaining a significant amount of Leonardo’s original detail. Since the fresco faced a significant amount of damage, it would have been a challenge to use the original as a reference for restorations. Thankfully, Giovanni Pietro da Birago managed to alleviate the situation in 1500 with his simplified engraving of Leonardo’s work. Other references used included two copies of the painting, one by Andrea Solari in 1520, and another by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli. Throughout the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the painting faced many ill-fated attempts at restoration. Brown considers the attempts as “a dramatic tale of restorer’s attempts to save it from ruin”. According to Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, whom would lead her own attempt at restoration in 1977, “the various attempts to save the Last Supper often layered damage upon damage by superimposing one incompatible material on another.” The materials used in the restorations would cause further harm to the work, causing the new pigment and amounts of Leonardo’s original to detach from the refectory wall. These “incompatible materials” ranged from cleaning agents such as “corrosive detergents used to clean the surface to varnishes and oils used to revive the dulled surface” (Barcilon, 369). Adhesives such as “refined shellac in alcohol” were used to reattach the fallen pigments to the wall and stabilize the work from further deterioration. As mentioned previously; to further stabilize the work and mitigate further damage, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon would lead an infamous restoration attempt in 1977. The purpose of her ambitious project was to restore as much of Leonardo’s work as possible, along with filling in the missing pieces using watercolor. While she pursued in her goal of bringing the work to its former glory, she came across various challenges such as cleaning the surface multiple times, sometimes cleaning deep into the painting’s multiple layers. She would state that after cleaning one day, the solvents she used would expose more grime from below for the next day of cleaning.  Unfortunately, while her restoration work was successful in its goal, it was also met with a significant amount of controversy. Many art critics considered Brambilla’s work on the painting to be unnecessary and destructive, since she chipped away elements of previous restoration attempts and portions of Leonardo’s original. James Beck, an Art History Professor at Columbia University in New York, considered the restoration to be “eighty percent of Brambilla’s work and a mere twenty percent of Leonardo’s”. He considered the job as a “repainting of a work that doesn’t have an echo of a past”. History Professor Martin Kemp questioned Brambilla’s decision to use watercolor to fill in the gaps of Leonardo’s lost work. After the restoration work was completed, other measures were taken to protect the masterpiece. The amount of people allowed in the refectory was severely limited to a small group (25-30 people), and ventilation units were installed to mitigate the humidity of the room. Thanks to the efforts of Brambillon and her team, The Last Supper stands beautifully as it overlooks Santa Maria della Grazie’s refectory.

            As it currently stands, Leonardo’s ambitious masterpiece is a mural of a monumental scale. Utilizing the technique of perspective, Leonardo manages to make the fresco appear as an extension of the refectory and gives the illusion of Christ and his apostles sitting in an alcove above the room. Christ’s abstract head at the center of the painting serves as a vanishing point; which is fitting, considering he is the main subject of the work. The twelve apostles surround Christ on both sides; all placed into groups of three throughout the painting. Using the studies from Leonardo’s notebooks, the placement of the apostles is as follows from left to right: Bartholomew, James the lesser (son of Alphaeus), Andrew, Judas, Peter, John, Thomas, James the Greater, Phillip, Matthew, Jude, and Simon. Each apostle is portrayed with a different reaction towards Christ’s revelation of his betrayal, ranging from John swooning behind him to Thomas’s expression of anger. Similar to many previous (and later) portrayals of The Last Supper, Judas Iscariot is shrouded in darkness and clutching a bag of silver. The bag of silver is one of two symbols incriminating him as Christ’s betrayer; the other being the bread he reaches for at the same time as his mentor, which is a subtle allusion to Matthew 26:23, “…He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.”  Leonardo applied three techniques in conjunction with perspective when creating the painting; sfumato for a hazy and softened effect in the composition, chiaroscuro to create the illusion of light coming in through the windows, and the effortless grace known as sprezzatura. While the changes to the environment have stabilized the condition of the mural, it is imperative for its survival that it must be moved to a new location; preferably a place that is non-secular. The Last Supper would seem inappropriate if placed in a secular location, as the main theme involves the final moments in the life of Christ. The painting would be transferred using a process similar to transferring an oil painting from a wood panel to a canvas; the layers of paint would be sandwiched between layers of paper during transport and placed on a new panel upon arrival.

Bibliography

Barcilon, Pinin Brambilla. Leonardo: The Last Supper. University of Chicago Press, 2001. (Nelson)

Brown, David Alan. Leonardo's Last Supper: The Restoration. Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1983. (Nelson)

Clark, Kenneth. Leonardo Da Vinci: An Account of His Development as an Artist. Penguin Books, 1971.

Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli (Giampietrino). The Last Supper (after Leonardo). 1520, London, England.

Goldscheider, Ludwig. Leonardo Da Vinci: Life and Work, Paintings and Drawings. Seventh ed., Phaidon Press, 1959.

King, Ross. Leonardo and the Last Supper. Walker and Company, 2012.

Leonardo. The Last Supper. Milan, 1494-1497, Santa Maria della Grazie Refectory.

Leonardo. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. Pg. 232

“Our History.” Cathedral of St. Joseph, cathedralsj.org/our-history.

“The Perpetual Restoration of Leonardo's 'Last Supper' – Part 1: The Law of Diminishing Returns.” Edited by Michael Daley, Artwatch, 14 Oct. 2014, artwatch.org.uk/the-perpetual-restoration-of-leonardos-last-supper-part-1-the-law-of-diminishing-returns/.

Pietro, Marani C. Leonardo's Last Supper (Translated by Margaret Kunzle). Edizioni Electa, 1986. (Nelson)

Richter, Irma. Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. Oxford University Press.

Solari, Andrea. The Last Supper (after Leonardo). Belgium, 1520, Leonardo da Vinci Museum.

Vasari, Giorgio. “Leonardo da Vinci.” The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. 1550.

Wallace, Robert. The World of Leonardo, 1452-1519. Time Incorporated, 1966.