The Last Supper

Leonardo da Vinci was already a well known artist when he created his masterpiece The Last Supper. He painted it on the wall of the Dominican, in oil. It took him four years to complete - 1495 to 1498

Leonardo da Vinci was working based on the few known documents which describe this meal. However this is not a direct account of the last supper as Da Vinci has changed the scene to create a more interesting picture. Some of these are quite obvious such as the fact that the feast was meant to take place at night whereas Da Vinci has set it in the as you can see through the windows behind the table. This gives better light to his painting.

A major point is that people of the time didn't sit at long tables like they do at modern day weddings! As Jesus wanted everyone to listen to him when he revealed there was a traitor among them. He would have wanted everyone to be able to see him.

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 And people didn't sit on hard chairs to eat, it was considered extremely bad for the digestion. Instead the sat back in chairs more like recliners so that the food was able to digest gently, meaning that meals were very long, drawn out affairs, from 3 to 4 hours. There's no way that Jesus and his disciples would have been arranged anything like in the picture.

However this all had a purpose as, Leonardo was making a painting that he wanted viewers to understand clearly. If he tried to show his Renaissance audience a large group of people with a ...

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