Shhh! We’re in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of The Last Supper. It’s dark and quiet in here. We’re with a tour guide, but she’s letting us soak it all in for a while before telling us about the amazing fresco in front of us.
Leonardo wasn’t the first person to paint the Last Supper. Compared to Leonardo’s version, the disciples in the others look like a bunch of guys having Sunday brunch at their monthly Rotary Club meeting. But not in this one. Leonardo decided to paint the scene just after Jesus let it slip that there was a traitor among them. As soon as the cat was out of the bag, the twelve disciples were all in a tizzy.
The Story of the Last Supper
You remember the story of The Last Supper in the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each wrote about it in their own words. The disciples were sitting at a long table. Jesus did most of the talking. Then, more or less out of the blue he said,
“Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
Whoa. Where did that come from? That’s a serious accusation. (Especially coming from Jesus, eh?) A statement like that would certainly get the disciples stirred up, which is how they look in the painting. Then, according to Matthew, Jesus said,
“Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
Yikes! After that comment, if I had been the traitor in the room, I don’t think I’d have much of an appetite for any Last Supper. In fact, it does appear as if Judas might be getting a little case of indigestion.
Our guide reminded us of the story and told us lots of interesting things about the painting. She had been very nice and congenial when we were riding through town, but now she’d taken on a serious tone.
Era un Vero Genio
She pointed out that Leonardo painted the Last Supper in perspective – a new concept at the time. The room seems to extend right into the painting. Speaking in her beautiful, highly italian-accented english, she drilled into our heads that Leonardo was no ordinary painter. No. Leonardo was a genius. She was so passionate. She really wanted us to get it.
Leonardo liked to play with codes. He invented a device that allowed the transfer of private messages with no possible way of discovery. It was a cylinder with dials on it. When you turned the dials to spell out the “key,” you could open the tube and get the message. If opened by force, a vial of vinegar inside would break, instantly dissolving the message. (And also any chance of convincing anyone that you didn’t mess around with it).
Leonardo was keen on symbology and secret messages, too. There’s no shortage of hidden messages and symbols said to be in The Last Supper. The big one ties into Dan Brown’s book, “The da Vinci Code.” The theory goes that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and that the Catholic Church doesn’t want anyone to know.
The story goes that Europeans discovered writings proving it when they took Jerusalem during the Crusades. Some people believe that the Knights Templar, (remember those guys?), supposedly formed to protect European pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land, were really formed to protect the secret.
Secrets and Symbols, Maybe
And not just the Knights Templar, but the Masons, too. (Gotta have the Masons involved in mysterious deeds of this magnitude, eh?) Some people believe that Ludovico and Leonardo were high-ranking Masons, by the way.
In Leonardo’s painting of The Last Supper, there’s one thing that gives the theorists goose bumps. The disciple, John, is sitting next to Jesus. But in the painting, John looks maybe more like a woman than a man(!)
And if the person next to Jesus in the painting was a woman, guess who it would be? That’s right – someone who has the same initials as the letters on the candy that “melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
Not only that, but the guy who invented “M&M’s” was another high-ranking Mason! So now you can guess what the “M’s” on an M&M stand for, eh?
OK – I made up that part about the M&M’s. Once you get going on these theories, it’s hard to stop.
But there are other interesting things about these two people in Leonardo’s painting. He inverted the colors of their clothes. One wears a red garment over a blue one underneath, and the other wears the exact opposite. Hmmm….
There’s also something peculiar about Jesus and John’s positioning. Their outlines make a perfect letter “V.” The letter “V” has a great deal of symbology tied to it from ancient times. Can you see the “V”? It’s there, for sure.
We ended our visit to Santa Maria delle Grazie, but we aren’t finished with Leonardo. Our next stop is the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, a museum that has a special exhibit of Leonardo’s personal notes. But that’s not what I’m excited about seeing there. I want to see the personal copy of a special book that belonged to someone who predates Leonardo by about 200 years.
To be continued…
Just for fun…
Era un vero genio. – He was a true genius. (Our guide would say “genio” as “ZHEHN-ee-oh,” where the ‘zh” sounds like the “si” in the word, “decision.”
And she said it like she meant it!
