
#148 – The Last Supper p3 – Leonardo #37
On this episode: A Borgia gets the Pope’s chestnuts fondled in the Vatican, why the the Last Supper is not a Seder, and a hole in Jesus’ temple.
On this episode: A Borgia gets the Pope’s chestnuts fondled in the Vatican, why the the Last Supper is not a Seder, and a hole in Jesus’ temple.
Leonardo starts work on the Last Supper. It’s a big deal and he wants to get it right. His will be the ULTIMATE Last Supper painting. Sadly, today it’s a piece of shit.
When Gian Galeazzo died in 1494, Ludovico Sforza finally became the official Duke of Milan. One of the first things he did was commission Leonardo to paint The Last Supper.
One of Leonardo’s tricks was the use of sfumato – using hazy, smoky outlines, instead of using harder lines as boundaries between objects, instead of white lines (which should only go up your nose). Another trick was the use of complex perspective. To understand these ideas in detail, he needed to dissect more than a few brains – and to learn the right way to boil an eye.
Of course, Leonardo, among all of his other accomplishments, also gave a good speech, especially when asked to explain why painting was the most noble of the arts, coming just after podcasting.
Part 2 of the crazy story of the discovery of LA BELLA PRINCIPESSA, in which Martin Kemp, the world’s leading authority of Leonardo, gets involved in solving the mystery.