Leonardo and the Last Supper

by Ross King

  47 Ernst Gombrich, “The Grotesque Heads,” in The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (Oxford: Phaidon, 1976), 61.

  48 On the engraved portrait, see Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant “Last Supper,” 80. Steinberg believes the supposed dissimilarity proves Vasari’s story to be “sheer fabrication,” but any dissimilarity actually seems to be the result of a difference in artistic media, level of detail, and level of skill.

  49 Goethe, Observations, 37.

  50 On the Jewishness of Judas in Italian paintings, see Brigitte Monstadt, Judas beim Abendmahl: Figurenkonstellation und Bedeutung in Darstellungen von Giotto bis Andrea del Sarto (Munich: Scaneg, 1995). I am indebted to Steinberg’s discussion of Monstadt’s thesis on p. 93, n29. On Judas’s red hair, see Paull Franklin Baum, “Judas’s Red Hair,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 21 (July 1922): 520–29.

  51 For Judas’s costume, see Barcilon, “The Restoration,” 382.

  52 The story is traced to Chapman in Austin B. Tucker, The Preacher as Storyteller: The Power of Narrative in the Pulpit (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2008), 196. For Davis’s version, see Commencement Parts (New York: Hines, Noble & Eldredge, 1898), 475.

  Chapter 15

  1 Sabba da Castiglione, quoted in Pedretti, Leonardo: Architect, 80.

  2 Villata, ed., Documenti, 102.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Quoted in Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 316.

  5 For Peraudi’s salary, see Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 403 and 529. Bandello’s story is found in Matteo Bandello, Tutte le opere, ed. Francesco Flora, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1934), 646–50. For a good discussion of Bandello’s story, see Norman E. Land, “Leonardo da Vinci in a Tale by Matteo Bandello,” Discoveries (2006), available online at: http://cstlcla.semo.edu/reinheimer/discoveries/archives/231/land231pf.htm.

  6 For Leonardo’s persistence with the project, see Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, “Lorenzo de’ Medici on the Sforza Monument,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Journal of Leonardo Studies and Bibliography of Vinciana, ed. Carlo Pedretti, vol. 5 (Florence: Giunti, 1992), 24.

  7 Pedretti, Leonardo: Architect, 72–74.

  8 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1523. For wages, see Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence, 294.

  9 Quoted in Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 305.

  10 Quoted in Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 503.

  11 Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 75.

  12 Villari, Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola, 189.

  13 Quoted in Pastor, History of the Popes, vol. 5, 523, and vol. 6, 16.

  14 Quoted in Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 295.

  15 Quoted in Ibid., 331.

  16 Commines, 267.

  17 Ibid., 482.

  18 Ibid., 281.

  19 Ibid., 283.

  20 Ibid., 284.

  21 Villata, ed., Documenti, 110. Leonardo is not actually mentioned in this document.

  22 Quoted in Pérez-Gómez, “The Glass Architecture of Luca Pacioli,” 262.

  23 For a good discussion of this property, see Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci, 312–14. Nicholl securely dates the gift of the land to August 1497, earlier than previously believed.

  24 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1566.

  25 Quoted in Lillian F. Schwartz, “The Staging of Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Computer-Based Exploration of Its Perspective,” Electronic Art, vol. 1 (1988), Leonardo: Supplemental Issue, 93.

  26 Observations, 7.

  27 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 1, §284.

  28 For a good discussion of perspective in the painting, see Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 182–86; and idem, “‘Fate come dico, non fate come faccio”: Lo Spazio e lo spettatore nell’ ‘Ultima Cena,’ “Il genio e le passioni, ed. Pietro Marani (Milan: Skira, 2001), 53–59.

  29 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 1, §§543 and 544.

  30 Kemp, Marvellous Works, 183–84.

  31 See Pedretti, Commentary, vol. 2, 59.

  32 See Carlo Pedretti, “Nec ense,” Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Journal of Leonardo Studies and Bibliography of Vinciana, ed. Carlo Pedretti, vol. 3 (Florence: Giunti, 1990), 82–90; and Kemp, Marvellous Works, 167–76.

  33 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 1, §680.

  34 Ibid., vol. 1, §704.

  35 Pedretti, Leonardo: Architect, 105.

  36 Quoted in Frederic J. Baumgartner, Louis II (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 9.

  37 Quoted in Ady, A History of Milan Under the Sforza, 173

  38 Ibid., 175.

  39 Quoted in Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 514.

  40 Quoted in Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci, 321.

  41 Quoted in Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 346.

  42 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1414.

  43 Ibid., vol. 2, §1371.

  44 Pedretti, Commentary, vol. 2, 11.

  45 Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi overo ammaestramenti (Venice, 1554), xiv.

  46 Quoted in Cartwright, Beatrice d’Este, 354.

  47 Giovio, “The Life of Leonardo da Vinci,” 29.

  48 Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 263.

  49 Villata, ed., Documenti, 136.

  50 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1379.

  51 Ibid., vol. 2, §1448. For a good discussion of Perréal, see Kemp and Cotte, La Bella Principessa, 36.

  52 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1379. See the discussion in Pedretti, Commentary, vol. 2, 326.

  Epilogue

  1 Quoted in Barbara Furlotti, The Art of Mantua: Power and Patronage in the Renaissance, trans. A. Lawrence Jenkins (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2008), 92.

  2 Villata, ed., Documenti, 131–32.

  3 Wilhelm Oechsli, The History of Switzerland, 1499–1914, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 28.

  4 Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 265. The specifics of Leonardo’s involvement at Santissima Annunziata—whose altarpiece was eventually completed by Filippino Lippi and Pietro Perugino—are highly obscure. For a good survey of the situation, see Jonathan Nelson, “The High Altar-piece of SS. Annunziata in Florence: History, Form, and Function,” The Burlington Magazine 139 (February 1997): 84–94. For Ser Piero’s involvement, see Cecchi, “New Light on Leonardo’s Florentine Patrons,” 124.

  5 Villata, ed., Documenti, 136 and 134.

  6 McMahon, ed., Treatise on Painting, 266.

  7 For the bridge, see Nicholl, Leonardo da Vinci, 353–55. For the canal, see Roger D. Masters, Fortune is a River: Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolò Machiavelli’s Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History (New York: Plume, 1999).

  8 Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 266.

  9 Goldscheider, Leonardo da Vinci: Life and Work, Paintings and Drawings, 29, 30 and 32.

  10 Quoted in Bramly, Leonardo, 353.

  11 Ibid., 346.

  12 Armenini, On the True Precepts of the Art of Painting, trans. Edward J. Olszewski (New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1977), 53.

  13 Creighton Gilbert, How Fra Angelico and Signorelli Saw the End of the World (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2003), 63; and Michelle O’Malley, “Pietro Perugino and the Contingency of Value,” in Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch, eds., The Material Renaissance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 108.

  14 See Marani, “Leonardo’s Last Supper,” 39.

  15 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1074.

  16 Guicciardini, The History of Italy, 153.

  17 Ibid., 155.

  18 Cecilia M. Ady, A History of Milan Under the Sforza (London: Methuen, 1907), 184.

  19 Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 270.

  20 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 2, §1566.

  21 Quot
ed in Bramly, Leonardo, 412.

  22 Richter, ed., The Literary Works, vol. 1, §651.

  23 Barcilon, “The Restoration,” 336.

  24 Goethe, Observations, 14.

  25 Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo: Studies for “The Last Supper” from the Royal Library at Windsor Castte (Florence: Electa, 1983), 145.

  26 Quoted in Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant “Last Supper,” 16.

  27 Goethe, Observations, 17.

  28 Ibid., vi. The visitor was G. H. Noehden.

  29 Church of England Quarterly Review 21 (1847): 500.

  30 Times, 11 March 1857.

  31 Henry James, Collected Travel Writing: The Continent (New York: Library of America, 1993), 372.

  32 Quoted in Marani, “Leonardo’s Last Supper,” 32.

  33 The Times, 31 May 1954.

  34 James Beck, cited in Piero Valsecchi, “It’s Art, but Is It Leonardo’s?” Milan: Associated Press Wire, 28 May 1999.

  35 For the versions in California: Umberto Eco, Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, trans. William Weaver (London: Vintage, 1986), 16–18. For Peter Greenaway: Randy Kennedy, “The Last Supper for the Laptop Generation,” New York Times, 2 December 2010. For the version in the Warhola family kitchen: Janet Daggett Dillenberger, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol (New York: Continuum, 2001), 80. Haltadefinizione’s magnifier may be seen at www.haltadefinizione.com. Websites too numerous to document testify—in both words and photographs—to the tattoos and coffins.

  Footnotes

  a The shield on the wall of the lunette on the east wall was destroyed by an Allied bomb in 1943.

  b An equivalent claim today might be that—as some have maintained—DNA is “God’s handwriting,” or that the Higgs boson, if it exists, truly is “God’s particle.”

  c During the eighteenth century the sitter was erroneously believed to be the wife of a Parisian iron merchant named Jean Féron whose wife was the mistress of François I of France, Leonardo’s last patron. The painting actually became known as La Belle Ferronière not in homage to the royally cuckolded ironmonger but because its subject wears a ferronière, a slim headband with a gem on the brow, an accessory fashionable in Milan in the 1490s.

  d The title of Duchamp’s work is a pun. The letters L.H.O.O.Q., spoken aloud in French, sound like “Elle a chaud au cul,” which translates as “She has a hot ass.”

  e The latter association undoubtedly comes from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, in which Jupiter’s wife, Juno, dispatches the goddess of childbirth, Lucina, to hinder the birth of Jupiter’s child by Alcmena, and Lucina (disguised as an old hag) sits with her fingers interlaced like a trellis.

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