Last Supper (Ghirlandaio)
The Last Supper (1480) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Domenico Ghirlandaio in the refectory of the monastery in Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany, next to the Ognissanti Church . It represents the last common meal of Jesus Christ with his apostles on the eve of his crucifixion . In the Catholic Church this meal is venerated as the “institution of the Eucharist ” and thus as the first Holy Mass .
Idol
During restoration work, a preliminary drawing was discovered on the left wall of the same room. Ghirlandaio designed a total of four frescoes on this theme within a few years, three of which have survived: In addition to the one in Ognissanti, an earlier one in the Abbazia di San Michele Arcangelo in Passignano (1476), a later one also in Florence in the San Marco monastery (c 1486).
In all three murals, the scheme resembles the fresco by Andrea del Castagno in the refectory of the Sant'Apollonia monastery in Florence (1447): the apostles are lined up at a long table in front of a back wall, Christ is placed in the middle, his favorite disciple John rests on the right of him on his chest, on the left Peter . Judas , who will betray Jesus to his opponents that same night, is the only one sitting in front of the table. Ghirlandaio's older fresco in Passignano is still strongly based on Castagno; the two later frescoes, similar to one another, break new ground.
description
The fresco measures 400 × 810 cm, the disciples and Jesus are about one and a half times life size. Ghirlandaio - following his example - put them behind a long table, but formed groups that talked to each other or communicated in other ways, even more than Castagno.
Judas is the only one who is completely visible and thus lifted out. However, his body appears in an oblique view from the back, and Judas is sitting lower here, because his stool is not on the wooden pedestal that supports and raises the bench for the other people. The fact that he is sitting alone on the other side of the table underscores his role as an outsider.
On the far left, the second disciple in the row turns astonished to his right neighbor; He points with his index finger to the scene in the middle of the board where Jesus has obviously just announced the betrayal by Judas. The disciple next to him, however, interrupts him by placing his left hand on his forearm, without taking his tense attention away from what is happening around Jesus. The third one leans forward curiously, his right hand on the table, so that he can also direct his gaze unhindered to the center of the table. The fourth disciple, in turn, shrinks back in dismay and puts his hand on his chest.
However, it is not only the words just uttered by Christ ("Truly, I say to you: One of you will betray me"; Matthew 26:21) that they want to hear carefully - they also pursue the angry question and the threatening attitude, with which Peter turns to Judas. With the thumb of his left hand, Peter points to Christ and seems to ask Judas whether it is he who will betray his Lord. In any case, Peter's grim expression on his face, his torso leaning forward and the knife pointing upwards in his right hand suggest the tone in which he is formulating this question.
Judas seems little affected by this suspicion. Defiantly, he puts his left hand (in which he is holding the wallet) on his thigh and, with his head held high, returns the challenging look of his counterpart. The proudly exhibited elbow is a pose that at that time only belonged to aristocrats and the military - in a refectory it inevitably had to appear haughty. The posture also signals that the traitor will probably get up in the next moment to leave the table community (John 13:30). Next to the left foot of Judas, the fresco on the baseboard of the bench is dated with the year “MCCCCLXXX” (1480).
John did not fall asleep in front of Christ, as he did in Castagno's fresco, but leaned on the table with his arms crossed and laid his head on Jesus' chest - which corresponds to the text of the Gospel of John (John 13:23). The disciple sitting next to John wrestles, his eyes on Christ, his hands grieved.
The two following disciples seem to be talking to one another, the younger trying to draw the older's attention to Judas - he has fixed his gaze on him out of the corner of his eye. It could be Thomas, because he raised his right hand in a two-finger gesture: perhaps an allusion to Jn 20: 24-29, the touch of Christ's wound on the side. The older disciple next to him has put his head in the right hand of the propped arm and is staring absently ahead of him. Ghirlandaio takes up an ancient mourning gesture that Castagno had introduced into the iconography of the Last Supper. Finally, the disciple on the narrow right side of the table asserts his own innocence to his neighbor with his hands on his chest.
Christ, in turn, transfigured his gaze upwards and seems strangely indifferent. However, this head of Jesus was renewed and completely changed in the course of a restoration by Carlo Dolci in the 17th century . The preliminary drawing uncovered when the fresco was removed in 1966 shows that Ghirlandaios' original depiction looked different.
Which of the disciples depicted is which apostle cannot be said with certainty - but some evidence justifies one or the other ascription, as we have already seen with Thomas. The disciple on Peter's right, one of the two older men at the table with white hair and a strong white beard, is likely to be Andrew . It is this place that speaks in favor of such an identification, because Andrew is Peter's brother and, together with him, was called by Jesus as his first disciples (Mk 1: 16-18).
It is very likely that the man next to John is his brother James the Elder . The brothers were the next disciples who were called by Jesus after Peter and Andrew (Matthew 4:21–22) and are also mentioned together in other places. (Mt 17.1 and 26.37).
Ghirlandaio turns out to be a realistic painter of fabrics. This shows the reproduction of the freshly laid tablecloth with its just smoothed out folds and the woven-in frieze at the forward-facing ends. With the same attention to detail, the artist devotes himself to the table decoration, which includes drinking glasses, knives and salt bowls, three plates with cut pieces of lamb and bread spread over the table. They refer to the meal that is currently taking place. Three glass carafes arranged in pairs on the table with spiral-shaped grooves contain white wine and water; some fruits serve as table decorations.
In front of each disciple there is a wine glass, apart from the middle group, where the large bowl between Judas and John takes up the entire space. It is an indispensable prop for the announcement of treason and is to be understood as a reference to Mt 26,33: "He who dips his hand with me into the bowl will betray me."
Ghirlandaio has expanded the real space of the refectory in an illusionist manner with his fresco . It looks like the actual vault continues in the fresco as the real consoles repeat themselves in the depth of the painted image. It is not immediately apparent to the viewer whether the center console is part of the real space or the image space. Ghirlandaio creates the impression of spatial depth primarily through the flush floor covering, the perspectively shortened sides of the U-shaped table and the shadows that the disciples cast on the uniform rear wall.
In the Florentine taste of the late 15th century, the bench has side panels made of carved spiral acanthus tendrils . The ornament is repeated in the painted frieze of the groin vault . The slight elevation of the bench on a wooden step corresponds to the contemporary customs in the Florentine refectories, in which the tables and benches were on pedestals made of wood or stone.
The view over the stalls to the treetops should give the impression of a garden landscape that adjoins the painted room. You can see the treetops that rise into the open sky, in which various birds fly - a motif that is reminiscent of Roman wall paintings in Pompeii . In the left bezel , a bird of prey in flight is grabbing its prey, and on the right another is chasing a duck. Trees and bushes are reproduced with botanical accuracy and bear lush fruit: pomegranates seem to be bursting, plump lemons, oranges and apples glow in the light, and dates shimmer in the palm tree crown. Some of the fruits have found their way onto the Lord's Supper table, only the cherries distributed on the table do not seem to come from the garden, because a cherry tree is missing there.
In and in front of Ghirlandaio's fresco, the bench and table pedestals ran along the walls in the refectory, image staff and viewers each sat with their backs to the wall, the space in front of the table remained free; the disciples grouped around Christ served the monks as a reflection of their own communal way of life. In sharing the meal and eating together, the members of the order experienced a feeling of community and togetherness; their goal was the coming heavenly table fellowship with Christ.
symbolism
Trees, fruits and birds can be understood symbolically. In the left lunette, for example, four goldfinches flutter around a pomegranate tree, the fruits of which indicate the sacrificial death of Christ. The colorful, conspicuous plumage of these small birds with the characteristic red spot around the beak led to the legend that a goldfinch tried to remove the crown of thorns from the head of Christ and stained its beak with blood. Two goldfinches are also shown in the right bezel.
In the side window openings of the room there is a peacock or a dove - symbols for the resurrection and the Holy Spirit . The duck stands for heavenly joys, the hawk for common attacks, the quail for sacrifices, and the lark (nesting in the grain) for the Eucharist.
The plants have a figurative meaning, which was known to the educated Renaissance man: cypress clarify the death palms the martyrdom . The cherries are symbols of the blood of Christ because of their color and red juice.
The two zinc jugs on the lower left and the bowl with the ointment vessel on the right edge of the picture could again allude to the washing of the feet (John 13: 1–11) that preceded the Lord's Supper. Below the peacock on the console of the bench is a vase with white, pink and red roses. It bears the signature of the commissioner for Ghirlandaios fresco, the convent of the humiliates of Ognissanti: The letters "OSSCI" stand for "Omnes Sancti" (= all saints); further signatures can be found left and right on the cheeks of the bench and on the crockery at the bottom right.
successor
Ghirlandaio's work caused such a stir that only six years later he was commissioned again with a work on the subject, this time for the Monastery of San Marco. The fresco there is almost a copy of the mural in Ognissanti.
Leonardo da Vinci was certainly able to see Ghirlandaio's frescoes in Florence - it is the model for his famous Last Supper in Milan and owes him the view of the landscape, the formation of groups of the disciples (Leonardo combines three of the disciples together) as well as some of the gestures.
literature
- Artur Rosenauer: On the style of Domenico Ghirlandajo's early works. In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 22 (1969), pp. 59–85.
- Ronald G. Kecks: Domenico Ghirlandaio and the painting of the Florentine early Renaissance. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2000.
- Eckart Marchand: Una mensa fighure d'apostoli e del nostro signiore. Ghirlandaios depictions of the Lord's Supper. In: Michael Rohlmann (Ed.): Domenico Ghirlandaio. Artistic construction of identity in Renaissance Florence. VDG, Weimar 2003, pp. 89–128.
- Brigitte Monstadt: Judas at the Lord's Supper. Figure constellation and meaning in depictions from Giotto to Andrea del Sarto. scaneg Verlag, Munich 1995, pp. 219-239.
- Stefanie Felicitas Ohlig: Florentine refectories. Form, function and the programs of their frescoes. Hänsel-Hohenhausen, Egelsbach 2000, pp. 197-213.
- Andreas Quermann: Ghirlandaio. Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft, Cologne 1998, pp. 26–35.
- Michael Rohlmann: Ghirlandaios Florence. In: Michael Rohlmann (Ed.): Domenico Ghirlandaio. Artistic construction of identity in Renaissance Florence. VDG, Weimar 2003, pp. 9–6.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Almost literal adoption of the text by Norbert Schnabel in http://syndrome-de-stendhal.blogspot.de/2014/09/ein-meilenstein-auf-dem-weg-zu-leonardo.html
- ↑ For Ronald G. Kecks, the plants and animals make this garden a representation of paradise : cypress, palm, orange, pomegranate and lemon trees are, in his opinion, symbolic of victory over death, redemption, and the resurrection from the dead eternal life. He points out that z. B. the two slender cypresses, which can be seen in the left lunette, belong to the trees in God's garden according to Ezekiel 31.8. "The birds of prey that hunt guinea fowl and ducks must be interpreted in this context as the triumph of Christ over evil" (Kecks 2000, p. 216). Eckart Marchand contradicts this interpretation; What Ghirlandaio shows above the group of apostles is to be interpreted as a view of the landscape outside the gates of Jerusalem , in which the Passion of Christ will later take place. There are no sources for the thesis that the predatory birds of prey are understood as the triumph of Christ over evil. In addition, Ghirlandaio used the motif relatively often in his landscape scenes. "Primarily, the birds are certainly used for reasons of varietas , they populate an otherwise monotonous sky" (Marchand 2003, p. 125).
- ↑ quoted from an explanation board set up on site.
- ↑ Arthur Rosenauer therefore called Ghirlandaio's wall painting a “milestone on the way to Leonardo” (Rosenauer 1969, p. 72).
