Da Vinci and Tintoretto: the Last Supper

da Vinci and Tintoretto: The Last Supper


    According to the Bible, the evening before Christ was crucified, he gathered his disciples together to eat, announced he had been betrayed by one of them, and asked them to perpetuate the celebration of the Eucharist after he was gone. The Last Supper is one common theme in European art, and the scene depicted is generally the next few seconds in the story just after Christ dropped the bombshell. Famous Italian painters Leonardo da Vinci and, a century later Tintoretto both painted the said scene, but their works are surprisingly dissimilar from one another. In fact, important changes in art occurred during the 16th century, which explains how the two versions differ in their composition and atmosphere, delivering opposed messages.

    Leonardo and Tintoretto composed their works differently, taking the freedom to dispose the elements on the canvas as they wished. Leonardo’s painting is made of neat, horizontal lines, that all converge towards a vanishing point situated behind the head of Christ, who forms a distinct triangle. This horizontal construction is relatively steady and symmetrically balanced. In stark contrast, Tintoretto’s relies on instable diagonals plunging towards the back of the room where dizzying spirals circle around an empty space. As for the elements and people themselves, Leonardo placed them behind limited and well-ordered boundaries, sitting the disciples in sedate positions. Tintoretto scattered them all over the place and sometimes off the painting’s limits, creating a spectacular impression of movement and disorder. Leonardo only painted the disciples seated with Christ in the center of a clear, neutral room, but Tintoretto also depicted several servants at the very front as well as a herd of ethereal angels peeking down from Heaven onto the table. He set the scene in an underground obscure place, without clear open spaces like in Leonardo’s painting. It is interesting to notice that...