Description of the picture:
The Lost Supper – Tintoretto. 1592-1594. Canvas, oil. 365 x 568 cm
This huge painting was specially painted for the church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, where she spent her whole life delighting and amazing guests. She is considered to be the crown of the master’s creativity, his greatest achievement in painting.
Everything is striking in the canvas – both its size and the complexity of the composition. It artfully intertwines the details of real, ordinary life, and biblical elements. The plot of the picture is very popular, often used by painters both for a long time before and after Tintoretto. This is the Secret Supper, Easter dinner, after which Christ was captured by the Romans and executed.
The canvas depicts the sacred moment of breaking bread when Christ uttered the phrase “This is my body.” This marked the beginning of one of the greatest church sacraments – the Eucharist. We know this sacrament under the name of the Holy Communion, where bread and wine symbolize the blood and flesh of Christ.
The room where Jesus Christ and his followers is located is illuminated by double beams of light – earthly, pouring from a suspended lighting device, and divine, flowing from the head of the very son of God and his apostles. He literally tears out separate fragments from the darkness, decorating the whole picture with spectacular golden highlights.
In the picture, not only the magnitude and presence of many figures in complex poses is impressive, but also the skillful use of perspective and foreshortening. The composition is built in such a way that the viewer sees what is happening from a point located slightly higher than the entire room with the characters. The master was able to perfectly convey the volume and depth of space, the canvas depicts a very large room, it is rather a tavern than a private dwelling, as described in the Bible, but this technique allowed us to add much more details and elements to the free composition."