He took much time to express every detail of each Apostle and the Lord. Leonardo had even wrote
in one of his notebooks that "A good painter has two chief objects to paint man and the intention of his
soul. The former is easy, the latter hard because he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of
the limbs"(Heydenreich, 27).
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For example, the Lord is very relaxed with his arms resting on the table
which adds to the portrayal of His greatness. He also emphasized the Lord's greatness by giving Him a
serious attitude and by presenting Him as untouchable with the space between Himself and the Apostles.
The distance put between them is called the spacial perspective, which is one of the techniques Leonardo
feels is important in naturalistic art. Although, the Apostles are painted in a more restless fashion.
They are all facing different ways and seem to be jumping out of their seats. Even the grouping of the
apostles in three was done intentionally.
He used four groups of three Apostles in each group in order to symbolize the Holy Trinity which means three, and thefour groups were used to symbolize the Gospels and the Cardinal Virtues . He was very cautious in every
aspect of his painting from the placement of the figures to the movement they each possessed. Leonardo
had to create actions and various postures which would be appropriate for each figure in order to keep
them from looking as if they were brothers.
Monica Strauss stated that in her research she had found that "for the first time in the history
of the subject, Leonardo had distinguished each one by appearance and gesture"(Strauss, 27). For each
of the twelve Apostles he had to not only resort to the historical information on their names and on
their appearances but also by the portrayal of their specific qualities as they are known to us from the
Gospels.
For instance, Judas was put outside the circle of the innocent Apostles and only his shadowed
profile can be found. He is the only one to be found sitting in the shadows and in solitude. This
allows the viewer to see the guilt he had, for he knew he was the one who would betray the Lord Jesus.
He is also frozen in shock, and he is an outcast in the group. The significance of the portrayal of
Judas is very important because in earlier pictures of the Last Supper, no one had ever been able to show
this (Heydenreich, 57).
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