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Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 759.5
EAN: 9781890951184
ISBN: 1890951188
Label: Zone Books
Manufacturer: Zone Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 318
Publication Date: May 01, 2001
Publisher: Zone Books
Studio: Zone Books
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Editorial Review:
A picture universally recognized, endlessly scrutinized and described, incessantly copied, adapted, lampooned: does Leonardo's near-ruined Last Supper still offer anything new to be seen or to be said? This book is a resounding Yes to both questions. With direct perception—-and with attention paid to the work of earlier scholars and to the criticism embodied in the production of copyists over the past five hundred years—Leo Steinberg demonstrates that Leonardo's mural has been consistently oversimplified. This most thought-out picture in Western art, painted in the 1490s on the north wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, is a marvel of compressed meanings. Its subject is not one arrested moment, but successiveness and duration. It is not only Christ's announcement of the forthcoming betrayal, but in equal measure the institution of the Eucharist. More than the spur of the moment animates the disciples, and more than perspective determines their housing. Though Leonardo's geometry obeys all rules, it responds as well to Christ's action at center, as if in emanation from the prime mover. The picture is simultaneously narrative and sacramental. As its protagonist is two-natured, as the twofold event of this night is both human submission and divine dispensation—-so the entire picture is shown to have been conceived in duplexity: a sublime pun.
Meanwhile, the unending disagreement as to what exactly is represented, what the depicted actions express, how and where this assembly is seated—-all these still-raging disputes are traced to a single mistaken assumption: that Leonardo intended throughout to be unambiguous and clear, and that any one meaning necessarily rules out every other.
As Steinberg reveals an abundance of significant interrelations previously overlooked, Leonardo's masterpiece regains the freshness of its initial conception and the power to fascinate.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - I love da Vinci's Last Supper...and this book
Leo Steinberg wrote a very intellectual, rigorous book about Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. I liked the way it gave so many fresh perspectives on how to analyze and interpret the painting. The genius of the book is that is amalgamates an enormous amount of information about the Last Supper...and somehow leaves you feeling that only part of the information has been uncovered. It's a feeling of ambiguity; so much has been learned, but we have so much more to discover. Just like da Vinci would ... Read More
Rating: - The Way to Look at a Classic
You have seen the image hundreds of times. It has been copied and parodied relentlessly for over five hundred years. It shows Jesus at the center of a dining table, flanked by six disciples on either side. Everyone knows _The Last Supper_, but few know as much about it as Leo Steinberg, who has looked and written and thought about it for thirty years. The result of these decades of concentration are poured out in _Leonardo's Incessant Last Supper_ (Zone Books), as close an examination of a painting ... Read More
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