Positive painting review

Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper, evokes a curiosity in its viewer that is seldom brought about by religious artwork of the 15th century. Perhaps it is the contextual background, so familiar to the viewer, which makes this painting intriguing. That is, given the common knowledge of what befalls Jesus after this dinner took place, viewers may look upon it with the same intrigue they would feel when looking at the last photograph taken of someone familiar to them days before their death. This depiction of Jesus Christ is one that humanizes him; it is this quality that makes da Vinci’s painting so vastly superior to other representations of Christ.
The expressions of Jesus’ disciples speak to their varying levels of shock and disgust at his declaration that one of them would betray him, and what gives their expressions a sense of reality is how they contrast Jesus’ look of knowing sadness and deep despair. The penetrating hurt that is conveyed in his downcast gaze juxtaposes the disciples’ expressions of disbelief, and for a moment, Jesus seems relatable. The exchange depicted in The Last Supper is identified by the viewer as familiar because everyone has experienced the type of hurt only a betrayal by an entrusted comrade can cause.
In most of the stories about Jesus’ life, and all the paintings that depict those events, the listener and viewer may be hard-pressed to truly find themselves and relate to Jesus on a personal level. This painting manages to accomplish this herculean task by focusing on an event that while is monumental in it’s implications for Jesus Christ, Christianity and religion in general, is when watered-down, merely a small snap-shot of a man’s very eventful life. Perhaps it is da Vinci’s nuanced portrayal of Jesus’ interactions with these twelve men contrasted with the relatively simplistic emotional subject matter of the piece that makes this painting so interesting and so difficult to turn away from. As the viewer searches for answers in the painting and clues into how da Vinci interpreted Jesus’ life, the simplicity of the material allows the viewer to somehow already have a tacit understanding of what this painting its meant to examine: the human and emotional side to Jesus Christ.