Lessons from the ‘Last Supper’
Art
By Vijayan Kannampilly

THE unveiling of the restored ‘Last Supper’ has been greeted with applause and abuse. Leaving aside the weighty question of the ethics of restoration, let us turn to the issue of why the ‘Last Supper’ had to be restored because, this has a serious bearing on much of Indian modern art.

Broadly speaking, a work of art requires restoration because of damages caused by either external or internal causes, or by a combination of both. In the ‘Last Supper’ both the causes were operative; damages during the Napoleanic Wars and the World War II being the external causes, and Leonardo’s experiments in painting providing the more fatal internal cause.

Though there are very few paintings and no sculptures by Leonardo, he was revered, then and now, because he epitomised all the qualities of the true Renaissance man who was knowledgeable about all the sciences then known to man and inquisitive about what was unknown. The ill-fated technique which he used to paint the ‘Last Supper’ arose from his desire to perfect a medium which would allow the artist the freedom to contemplate in the midst of creation. In the traditional method of fresco painting, the pigments once applied to the lime-plaster cannot be changed without damaging the surface on which the pigment is applied.

This means that every detail of the painting has to be worked out in complete detail before the paint is put down. Leonardo’s innovation was to use pigments with a "medium containing oil and varnish" instead of the traditional method of grinding pigments in water. We also know from contemporary accounts that Leonardo’s new technique allowed him the liberty to paint in intermittent phases. While the painting itself won enormous praise both before and after it was completed (1499), within a very short time the new technique’s inherent instability became alarmingly visible and was made worse by the dampness of the wall which served as the support.

What remains of the ‘Last Supper’ indicates that the visual impact of this work is essentially orchestrated through movement. This is especially clear when we compare Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’ with the ‘Last Supper’ painted more or less at the same time by his contemporaries. These latter masters represented the subject in the time-honoured manner of Christ in the center flanked by his disciples on the far side of the table and excluded Judas, both physically and visually, to the other side. Leonardo’s ‘Last Supper’, on other hand, is a composition of four groups of three disciples each, with Christ in the center, making the table in the painting as much a part of the dining room on whose far wall it was painted.

Yet each of these distinct groupings is linked to each other by gestures and movements, so much so that the painting’s visual unity which should have been hampered by the group arrangement is enhanced to create a sense of great drama and passion. Given the complexity of the treatment, both in terms of rejecting the easy route of repeating the historically sanctioned method of representation and in working out a new way of executing a subject familiar to every one in the Christian world. Leonardo understandably had good reasons for trying out a technique which gave him the freedom of time to contemplate in the midst of creation.

The world has not seen a Leonardo either before or after him. Therefore to speak of India modern artists in this piece would appear totally inappropriate. However within the context of the restoration controversy it is pertinent because of the mainly internal problems which are causing near irreparable damages to quite a few of the works of well-known Indian painters.

For instance, it is as an indisputable fact that most of Amrita Shergill’s oil paintings (unlike Ravi Varma’s) are in a state of disrepair. While it is the fashion of the day to blame the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), the principle holder of Shergills, for this, the truth is that it is the careless technique of the painter which lies at the root of the problem. One would imagine that given the progress in art education painters who began their work after Shergill would be aware of this problem.

Even a cursory examination of the paintings in the privately-owned Jehangir Nicholson Collection exhibited recently at the NGMA, reveals that the optimism is misplaced. While some of the paintings on view had serious structural flaws which should not have appeared given their relatively young age, a few are seen to be coming off their supports. In most cases the damages have been caused because of the unhealthy impatience of the artists with time — their hurry to beat time in order to meet the market demand.

Leonardo’s problem was just the opposite: It stemmed from his scientific curiosity and his desire for a technique which gave him more time, but which ultimately failed to withstand the test of time. Strangely enough the works in the Nicholson Collection which seem to have passed this test are the works of Ara who did not go to an art school. Perhaps, having an art education in India is not an advantage after all.