Summary
According to Leonardo's journals, the year 1490 marked
the arrival of a new member to the artist's household: the ten-year-old
boy Giacomo, known as "Salai." Salai was a beautiful boy from
a peasant family. No one knows the precise nature of his relationship
to Leonardo, though the master seemed quite indulgent toward him, showering
him with gifts and never punishing him for his constant petty thievery.
Salai lived with Leonardo for the rest of his life. However,
they often quarreled, and for one reason or another, Salai seems
to have received less at Leonardo's death than seems appropriate.
In 1493, a woman named "Caterina" came to live with Leonardo.
Although historians remain unsure whether this woman was Caterina
Leonardo's mother– she may have been a servant–but many scholars
suspect she was indeed the artist's mother: some of the few vague
personal notes in Leonardo's notebooks suggest that he had invited
her, as opposed to hiring her. Also, the Caterina that came in
1493 died a few years later, and this would have made sense given
his mother's age; moreover, in Leonardo's day mothers often came
to live with their children after their husbands' deaths. However,
Leonardo's accounts show that he spent curiously little on her funeral.
He may have wanted to avoid a conspicuous funeral, not wanting
to draw attention to his illegitimacy and dishonor his mother.
In 1495, Leonardo began work on a large wall painting
for Sforza. Twice a week, Sforza ate dinner in the refectory of
the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie; he wanted a large portrayal
of Jesus' Last Supper to hang on the wall facing the head table.
The Last Supper and the Mona
Lisa are easily Leonardo's most famous paintings. Of
the millions who have seen reproduction of the The Last
Supper, few realize that it is not only a masterful painting,
but also a cheap optical illusion! Painted on the wall of a refectory
(or convent dining room), it was in fact intended to appear an extension
of the room itself; the effect is achieved by the painting's perspective,
which matches the lines of the room. Thus the table of Christ
floated above the heads of the dining monks. The perspective serves
other purposes as well: its lines focus on Christ's head, which
is cleverly framed by an open window–a kind of circumstantial halo.
The pious would say that Leonardo wanted to show that Jesus's
natural grace provided him with this divine framing, that Leonardo
eschewed painted gold discs because they were artificial. The
German writer Goethe, however, suggests that Leonardo left out
halos as a gesture toward secularizing the myth of Jesus. At any rate,
Leonardo took special care to follow scriptural details; the seating
arrangement reflects the Bible's description, though to achieve
this Leonardo flew in the face of traditional quatrocento arrangements,
which had Judas sitting on the opposite side of the table. Here
he is the third man to Christ's right; he clutches a moneybag.
Christ forms a regal triangle with his body, like the Virgins of Adoration
of the Magi or Virgin of the Rocks; his
disciples form rippling waves. He has just announced that one of
them will betray him, but he has not yet indicated that it is Judas.
Each disciple is eager to acquit himself or identify the future
traitor. Grouped into threes, the disciples on the far right recoil
in surprise, while the next group leans toward Christ with curiosity;
each group has a slightly different reaction to the news. Generally,
the hands of the disciples contradict the movement of their bodies,
giving the whole composition a flowing circuit that always leads
back to the center. As in the Adoration of the Magi, Leonardo
shows his ability to animate a scene that had become clichéd through
countless previous depictions.
Because his master, Verrocchio, had not been an expert
in wall painting, Leonardo himself lacked significant knowledge
of the correct technical process. He tried to invent his own paint
mixtures, but he insisted on painting with oils, which do not suit
wall painting. As a result, the painting began to deteriorate
almost immediately.
While Leonardo was working on The Last Supper, the
famous mathematician Fra Luca Pacioli came to stay in Milan. As
an illegitimate child, Leonardo had been denied secondary education,
and thus could not perform even simple algebra. However, he had always
had an interest in numbers and math, and he eagerly learned from
Pacioli; Pacioli for his part must have shared a mutual awe for his
pupil: Leonardo was already the author of so many designs and discoveries.
The two even collaborated on a book, De divina proportione, Leonardo
supplying the illustrations. Also at this time, Leonardo decorated
the La Sala delle Asse.
