MHC scholar sees da Vinci palate in 'Last Supper' dish

By Kristin Palpini
Staff Writer

Published on October 31, 2008

According to artist Leonardo da Vinci, Jesus' last meal was an Italian Renaissance feast of grilled eels garnished with orange slices.

This revelation regarding the piles of picked-over food on the plates of the apostles depicted in da Vinci's "Last Supper" comes from John L. Varriano, the Idella Plimpton Kendall Professor of Art at Mount Holyoke College. What made his observation possible was a thorough cleaning of the Italian fresco in the late 1990s.

Varriano said few people have scrutinized the meal featured in the painting. Most scholars have focused their efforts on the position and expressions of the people as they react to Jesus' announcement that one of his 12 followers would soon betray him.

"All the emphasis had been on human interaction," Varriano said. "No one to my knowledge was looking at the food on the table."

Contemporary sensibility

Varriano conducted his "Last Supper" research for a book he is writing on food and Renaissance art. An article on Varriano's discovery was featured in the winter 2008 edition of the academic journal, Gastronomica.

The eels and oranges are more than a detail in the late 15th-century painting, said Varriano. In typical Renaissance style, da Vinci embellished his masterpiece with contemporary features as a way of making long-ago scenes relevant to his patrons and bringing an element of humanity to spiritual events.

"The presence of the eels and the orange slices is part of a much larger intention on Leonardo's part," Varriano said. "The furnishings in the room, the tablecloth on the table, the food, the almost portraitlike depictions of the apostles were all a move away from the other worlds, the supernatural.

"The Renaissance idea was to present these most mysterious things of the distant past and make them understood in contemporary, human terms," he said.

Orange slices were the parsley garnish of the late 1490s - many dishes came adorned with the bright fruit. Grilled eels were common fare in Renaissance times and are a traditional Italian meal served on Christmas Eve.

Da Vinci painted eels and oranges "in the interest of making the meal on the table seem real and accessible to his viewers," said Varriano, adding that it is highly unlikely Jesus, who was Jewish, actually ate a plate full of eels as his last supper. Eels are not kosher.

But da Vinci's "Last Supper" audience wasn't Jewish. They were a hall full of Italian monks. The "Last Supper" was commissioned by the monks of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan to adorn their dining hall. Da Vinci worked on the fresco from 1494 to 1498.

Like many artists of his time, da Vinci added contemporary details to his artwork to please his patron. Italian Renaissance art is well known for breaking with the medieval tradition of separating the sacred from man. Renaissance artists tried to link the two worlds by humanizing the holy with contemporary trappings.

There is also evidence that da Vinci would have been aware of the eels-and-oranges meal. On one of da Vinci's many handwritten lists is a record of his library, said Varriano. Among his few books was a cookbook by Bartolomeo Platina which contained that recipe.

"Their day is projected onto the historical event, which is never described in the Bible itself," Varriano said. "The artist had to fill in the details. Renaissance art is all about elaboration."

Uncovering a masterpiece

Figuring out what da Vinci had the apostles and Jesus eat for the meal wouldn't have been possible before 1998, Varriano said. This was the year centuries of dirt, grime and paint applied by other artists were all removed.

Efforts to conserve da Vinci's "Last Supper" began a handful of decades after the work was finished. Flouting traditional - and painstaking - fresco methods, da Vinci decided to use a different binding agent for his pigment. Instead of utilizing plaster, he employed pitch, the sticky sap found in pine trees.

"It didn't work," Varriano said of da Vinci's new fresco method. "It started flaking off the walls. Moisture came through. By the 16th century, 40-50 years after it was painted, it was barely recognizable. What happened next was a sad story."

To preserve da Vinci's work in the dining hall of the monks' home, conservators and artists painted over damaged sections of the masterpiece. The work became dark with the numerous applications and the artist's vision was muddled by many hands, Varriano said.

"The early conservation concealed more than it revealed," he said.

But starting in 1996, a team of conservationists worked three years to strip away the layers to reveal da Vinci's original fresco and give the artwork a refreshed relevance.

A high-resolution, 16 billion pixel image of the "Last Supper" was posted online in the fall of 2007.

"This was a big eye-opener. This is why the picture is back in the news again," Varriano said.

Varriano decided to investigate the "Last Supper" for his book, "Palettes and Peacocks: Italian Renaissance Art and Cuisine." The book is due out in fall 2009. Included in the book is a chapter on "sacred suppers."

Varriano's book traces the changing relationship between art, food and architecture throughout the Renaissance.

"The Renaissance loved to do this - staging ancient stories in modern dress," Varriano said.

Kristin Palpini can be reached at kpalpini@gazettenet.com.