The Last Supper can be found at the Convent Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. — Photo: Florence Teh
It took three trips to Milan, Italy, before I finally got to see one of the most revered paintings, The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest painter of the Renaissance period.
It has certainly been a long wait, but all I got in the end were 15 miserable minutes and a viewing experience shared with 12 other people – those are the rules for each session.
I paid a princely sum to one of the tour agencies to join a group to see this magnificent work of art, which has been on the wall of the dining hall at the Convent Santa Maria delle Grazie since 1495.
Thrilled about the visit, my wife and I decided to make our way to the convent three hours before our session, thanks to our kiasu-ness (afraid to lose).
We didn’t want to miss our slot since we had to use the underground metro train to the nearest station, which has signs conveniently only in Italian, and that might have slowed us down.
Unsurprisingly, we were too early, and the blistering summer heat didn’t reward our eager beaver approach as there’s practically no shade outside the convent.
But really, time passes by fast because there are plenty of eateries and shops in the vicinity. Besides, when one is in Milan, do as the locals do – order a drink at a café, be idle and just watch people passing by. After all, when one is on holiday, who cares what’s happening in Malaysia or anywhere else in the world? The artwork we had planned to feast our eyes on certainly kept us focused at the time.
The Last Supper has created a deep impression of what Jesus’ last meal with his 12 Apostles was like, before he was captured and crucified.
Non-Christians, and even many Christians, assume that da Vinci’s artwork is an accurate depiction, but in truth, it’s not.
Firstly, the table is linear, and incredibly, all the characters are seated in a straight row. Well, da Vinci likely had to fit everyone in a single frame. Liken it to using our phone to capture a memorable moment and squeezing everyone into the shot and you’ll get the picture.
But the Jews then would have been seated at a triclinium, which was the popular culture of that time.
(A couch extending around three sides of a table is a triclinium used by Romans as well as the Jews then.)
Visitors to Jerusalem would be able to see paintings and wooden carvings of a more likely version of The Last Supper’s seating. I know this first-hand having been to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage in 2005.
Theologians including Prof Jonathan Klawans from Boston University, have said The Last Supper may be a “characteristic of the Passover meal, which is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal”.
The disciples were also unlikely to have sat upright, as in da Vinci’s impression, as they were reclined, which was the custom when partaking in the Passover meal, according to Creation.com, a Christian website.
(The Passover event is to commemorate the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt and the “passing over” of the forces of destruction, more than 3,000 years ago.)
The Passover is celebrated after sunset on a full moon – and not during daytime as depicted in the painting, “which shows daylight outside the windows, suggesting an Italian luncheon rather than a sacred observance conducted in Jerusalem”.
The painting also features crusty loaves and fish, but it should be unleavened bread, and crucially, wine. Basically, the menu was wrong, and luckily, there were no pizzas, or it would be blasphemous.
Certainly, it’s one of the most studied paintings of this great artist since religion is involved, unlike the Mona Lisa – reportedly a portrait of Lisa, the wife of rich Italian merchant Francesco del Giocondo.
As I sat inside the room of the monastery, I took the valuable short time to immerse myself and admire this art of wonder, which has attracted the world to this place. In 2019, just before the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly half a million people visited the convent in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of the death of this great Renaissance painter and inventor.
As the tour ended, I asked the guide who the feminine looking person with long hair seated to the right of Jesus was.
“That’s not Mary Magdalene (a disciple of Jesus’), that’s John (one of the 12 Apostles),” he retorted, looking annoyed and seemingly tired of this question from another idiot who has read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
But ironically, the book, which was eventually made into a Hollywood movie starring Tom Hanks, has generated interest in the subject as well as this great 15th century masterpiece.
