Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper (Zone Books) - Hardcover

Steinberg, Leo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890951188 ISBN 13: 9781890951184

Publisher: Zone Books, 2001

Synopsis

A picture universally recognized, endlessly scrutinized and described, incessantly copied, adapted, lampooned: does Leonardo’s near-ruined Last Supper still offer anything new to be seen or to be said? This book is a resounding Yes to both questions. With direct perception ― and with attention paid to the work of earlier scholars and to the criticism embodied in the production of copyists over the past five hundred years ― Steinberg demonstrates that Leonardo’s mural has been consistently oversimplified.

This most thought-out picture in Western art, painted in the 1490s on the north wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, is a marvel of compressed meanings. Its subject is not one arrested moment, but successiveness and duration. It is not only Christ’s announcement of the forthcoming betrayal, but in equal measure the institution of the Eucharist. More than the spur of the moment animates the disciples, and more than perspective determines their housing.

Though Leonardo’s geometry obeys all the rules, it responds as well to Christ’s action at center, as if in emanation from the prime mover. The picture is simultaneously narrative and sacramental. As its protagonist is two-natured ― as the twofold event of this night is both human submission and divine dispensation ― so the entire picture is shown to have been conceived as double: a sublime pun.

Meanwhile, the unending disagreement as to what exactly is represented, what the depicted actions express, how and where this assembly is seated ― all these still raging disputes are traced to a single mistaken assumption: that Leonardo intended throughout to be “unambiguous and clear,” and that any one meaning necessarily rules out every other.

As Steinberg reveals an abundance of significant interrelations previously overlooked, Leonardo’s masterpiece retains the freshness of its initial conception and the power to fascinate.

About this title

About the Author

Art historian Leo Steinberg is Benjamin Franklin Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art, Michelangelo's Last Paintings, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, and Encounters with Rauschenberg.

Reviews

Original to the point of provocation, veteran art historian Steinberg (The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art), a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, has long been a legendary figure in his field. This fascinating new study is as much about the idea of Leonardo's famous Last Supper in Milan as the actual, ruined painting itself. Most critics have seen Leonardo as wishing to freeze a single moment in time, but Steinberg asserts convincingly that the table scene portrays "successiveness and duration." He makes lively contemporary parallels, from a magazine cartoon of The Last Supper, with Jesus telling a waiter, "Separate checks," much to the astonishment of the disciples, to the ballet Agon by George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky, which, like The Last Supper, also contains infinite groupings that add up to 12 protagonists. In chapters like "Seven Functions of the Hands of Christ," Steinberg adds multiple layers of complexity to the work, shown repeatedly in 201 b&w illustrations and a four-color gatefold insert. There are intriguing aphorisms sure to lead anyone who cares about art to much pondering, like calling The Last Supper "probably the only great painting that earns praise for being symmetrical." Among numerous lengthy appendixes is a particularly useful one on later copies of Leonardo's masterwork. After reading this delightfully stimulating excursus, art lovers everywhere will still regret the painting's ravagement by time, but an intellectual achievement of this order is a real consolation. (Sept. 1)Forecast: The more The Last Supper deteriorates, the more interest it seems to generate. Most casual and serious readers of art history will find the combination of Steinberg and Leonardo hard to resist, and academic collections will not want to be without it. This will be a big book in the field this season, and the painting's fame should lead to some generalist reviews.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Like many masterpieces, "The Last Supper" has been so long enshrined that the specificities of its greatness can be hard to perceive. This exhaustive consideration (updated and expanded from a well-known 1973 essay) locates the work's genius in its capacity to express simultaneously the secular and the mystical, collapsing the psychological drama of Christ's betrayal and the inauguration of the Eucharist into a single moment. Recapitulating the painting's reception through history, Steinberg's close reading of its individual elements, formal aspects, and setting is an exemplary piece of criticism, illuminating da Vinci's intentions and his achievement in much the same way that recent restorations have helped us see "the most thought-out picture in the history of art" afresh.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Another Da Vinci icon familiar to most of the world is, of course, La Gioconda, or The Mona Lisa. Sassoon (history, Univ. of London) has written an accessible work, more historical than analytical, that is essentially a biography of the painting itself. Nearly every fact one could ever hope to know about The Mona Lisa is traced, and the travails of the painting provide more than enough action and drama for any reader. Sassoon's knowledge of the minutiae of history and his respect for the image drive the narrative, which ranges from the painting's intriguing beginnings through the abuse of the image by the modern advertising industry. The Mona Lisa has traveled the world and smiled her way into the minds of many generations, and the author rightly points out her effect on the popularization of serious art in general. Thoroughly researched and highly readable, this is recommended for all libraries.
- Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zone Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1890951188
• ISBN 13: 9781890951184
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320