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CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: May 20, 2001
Latest update: May 20, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

This essay is based on "A Much-Scuffed Monument to Genius," by Matthew Gurewitsch. Arts and Leisure. New York Times. p. AR 17. Sunday, May 20, 2001.

Pietro C. Marani, a professor of art history, a former museum director, and co-author of Leonardo: The Last Supper, says of the Last Supper that "Leonardo's expression of the passions . . . is without precedent." So I bring this to your attention as one of the masterpieces of expression in Western art.

Gurewitsch offers this description:

"Leonardo, . . . through genius of portraiture and gesture dramatizes a single sharp, specific moment. 'He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, that same shall betray me.' The fatal words still hang in the air. The face of Jesus reflects drained resignation, but around him rages a symphony of individual reactrions: puzzlement, suspicion, brooding, anxiety, terror, denial, the search for allies and (most moving of all) the stark, lonely revulsion of James Major, caught in full exclamation."

The University of Chicago Press, which published Leonardo: The Last Supper, has made of it a web feature, that includes fourteen images. Don't miss this opportunity to view them.