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How is an artist to get all this into a painting?
They are paintings in which so much is at stake.
Which is how I found myself, recently, looking closely at two versions of the Last Supper.
This promoted mold between the work and its surface.
He paid it no mind.
Worse, the wall he painted on was filled with moisture-retaining rubble.
By the time he finished in 1498, the painting was already deteriorating.
It was flaking 20 years later.
In 1532, it was called blurred and colorless.
By mid-century, it was written that the painting is all ruined.
Vasari described it in 1556 as a muddle of blots, saying the figures were unrecognizable.
In the 1700s, drapery was hung to protect the work.
Soon, artists began touching up missing and damaged parts.
In 1770, the whole thing was largely repainted.
At some point, a door was cut into the painting; floods came and went.
Napoleons army stabled horses in the refectory, and soldiers reportedly lobbed bricks at the apostles heads.
The painting survived, covered in sandbags and mattresses, but remained exposed to the elements for months.
In 1999, the entire thing was restored.
So who knows what were looking at?
Even so, we are struck by Leonardos gigantic leap of painterly faith.
This isnt a style of the Church, Italy, a patron, or a doctrine.
Art history has been going through regular stylistic shifts ever since.
This is what a social revolution looks like.
This brings us to Castagnos marvelousLast Supper,a Middle Renaissance masterpiece.
This huge beauty covers one wall in the Florence refectory of the Benedictine nuns of Saint Apollonia.
The space isnt rhythmic, cinematic, naturalistic, breathing, or real.
Its a tour de force of divided attention.
CastagnosLast Supperis set where it was in the Bible: the eastern Roman Empire city of Jerusalem.
The dress is contemporary Roman: toga.
The decor is wealthy contemporary Roman.
Each is a lavalike abstraction of the emotional state of the disciple below.
I dont recall ever seeing anything like these before.
These are each great abstract paintings.
As close as they are together, however, each is in his own visual and interior space.
This mystic dislocation connects Castagno to the mind-set and space of Gothic and medieval art.
Things dont flow; they stop and start.
Yet his scale, space, techniques, ambition, and colors are pure Renaissance.
This makes optical sparks crackle.
The figures are not people so much as theyre symbolic statues and states of mind.
This turns a skeleton key in the picture.
Now I see the disciples having visionary premonitions of all dying martyrs deaths.
Note his hooknose and stereotypical Jewish features.
Judas teeters on a three-legged stool and seems suspended in midair.
His feet dangle, which makes him look silly and stunted.
Jesus says it is he whom he offers a crust of bread.
Look close; Judas holds that sop in his right hand.
Peter is seated on Jesus right (our left).
The Gospel records that Peter protests to Jesus at dinner that he will never betray him.
Jesus tells him that he will deny him three times before the break of the next day.
This comes to pass.
(He also falls asleep while on guard right before Christ is arrested.)
The disciple to Peters right is James the Minor.
He looks into a glass of red wine; you could almost see the reflection of his head there.
No wonder everyone seems frozen.
Theyre being given some sort of intuition of whats to come.
On Jesus immediate left (our right) is John.
Often called the Beloved of Christ, he bows his head into Jesus arm.
Next is Andrew, who holds a knife.
Perhaps Andrews twisted foot implies his crucifixion on an X-shaped cross.
Next is Jude, who is the most emotionally lost at sea.
He will later be shot with arrows, clubbed, or crucified.
The violent death of Jesus and his disciples are key components of Christianity.
Suffering and death are at the core of its idea of redemption, at least before Martin Luther.
And thats in this painting.
This is a great painting, a masterpiece in pristine condition.
But there are no lines to see it, no souvenir industry built around it.
Maybe its because Castagno died so very young, before the age of 40.
But he didnt live to be part of the revolution.
He wasnt there to develop and advance a style he helped codify.
