THE SUPPER THAT KEEPS THE HISTORY AWAKE

THE SUPPER THAT KEEPS THE HISTORY AWAKE

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMÁN VILLENA

De Vinci the genius. A man who left in his paintings symbolics signs, gestures and veiled tracks that allude to hidden messages, a reserved legacy to those who assumes the challenge to decipher their symbolism.

The metaphysics that sustains his work The Last Supper, led to his invention of the technique of chiaroscuro-modeling of the forms by contrast between light and shadow, and the sfumato, consisting of eliminating the lines, diluting them in a kind of fog that produces an illusion effect of immersion in the material reality.

This atmospheric perspective - the landscaping backgrounds of his pictures are another constant of his work, also it was learned for the great Renaissance masters, Rafael, Sanzio and Andrea the Sarto. His method of composition - that reaches the summit with The Last Supper already announces in his precocious adoration of the wizards. The latest painting cannot be understood without his legacy and achievement.

Mary Magdalene or John?

Many students of the symbolism play with this question, indicating that in the painting the essential bread or chalice is not there. It is possible to be interpreted that the chalice absence implies that Maria is the saint Grail inverted. Leonardo da Vinci communicates in this work his conviction that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and were the founders of the Merovingia dynasty in France.

That she was going to be the leader of his Church. That Peter did not approve it, and that she was the authentic Saint Grail. The question in what is the base of this asseveration? It explains to us: that the personage who has considered John is in fact Mary Magdalene; by the position of Jesus and Maria forming a “M”; by a hand without body, supposedly the one of Peter, that uses a knife; and because there is no chalice: so the chalice must be Mary. Leonardo meant with this interpretation that his descendants are to his right.

The real problem is the result of our lack of familiarity with the “types”. In his Treaty of the Painting, Leonardo explains that each personage must be painted in accordance with their age and condition. A wise man has certain characteristics, old woman others and the children another. A classic type, like in many pictures of the Renaissance, is the “student”. The favorite, the proteges are always very young men, totally shaved and of long hair, in order to transmit the idea that not yet they have matured, not sufficient enough to have their way. Throughout the Renaissance, the artists painted thus to Saint John. They always represented him like a beardless young person, without the strong and resolute appearance of the man.

Another meaning

It is important to know that the Master studied the translation done by Ficino of the Asclepios, given work to Hermes Trismegisto, in which it was taught how the priests of the Pharaohs gave life to the statues of their temples and Da Vinci applied those techniques in his great work. Javier Sierra range, in his book Secret Supper, confirms the distribution of the disciples of the Cenacle. There are four groups of a three, to represent the four elements of nature, and he even assigns to each of them a specific zodiacal sign. Thus to Simon - who is to the right end of the table corresponds Aries. To Thaddeus, Taurus. To Mark, Gemini. The sign of Cancer is for Philip, for James the Major. Virgo for Thomas. And the balance of Libra for John or Magdalene, has an important symbolic here, when considering to the (a) young like an element adjuster of the future church. Scorpion for Judas, Sagittarius for Peter, Capricorn for Andrew, Aquarius for James the Minor and Pisces for Bartholomew. Each disciple have a correspond answer and Jesus in the center incarnates the ideal of the sun. It is a talisman work.

Also according to the distribution, Da Vinci assigns a letter to each disciple who is seated in the divine table. John and James occupy the places that Christ promised to them. along to Philip, Sapient among the twelve, the only one who pointed out himself, telling where we need to find our salvation. The remaining group of apostles was solved with identical rapidity. Mateo, the disciple whose name, means “gift of promptness", already augured a quick outcome.

And Leonardo baptized like Nevus, the diligent one. His letter added to the Omega of the Taddeo formed a legible syllable already “N-O”. then add to it C , the resulting panorama felt like an evocative: four groups of three letters, with a vowel always in center and an enormous one to presiding over the scene let themselves read a stranger and forgotten magical formula MUIT NEM TO the NOC. That extracted of an Egyptian text its means Mut, wife of Amon “the Hidden one”, the great God of the Pharaohs. But as Leonardo da Vinci always wrote the other way around, and is necessary to read reflecting it in the mirror, means IT CONSOLE A-MEN-TUM, like the knot of the table cloth. The secret of the 13 personages represented in his painting incarnates the thirteen letters of the Consolamentrum, unique sacrament admitted by the pure men (the Cataros), an invisible, intimate spiritual sacrament.

The Perfect Proportions

THE PERFECT PROPORTIONS

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

Leonardo worked hard to get knowledge in all manifestations: the art, science, the technique… It was convinced that “the knowledge did not occupy place” and trusted blindly the capacity of the man to explore all horizons. After half century, his figure became a referring one for the contemporary culture. His spirit of curiosity and his thirst of knowledge continue astonishing many people who follow the same interests as him.

Just inaugurated the third millennium, the image of Leonardo invites to a reflection: In the era of the specialization of the knowledge, computer science and technology, has use a scholar, a total wise person like him. He was ahead of his time. He wanted to project without restrictions his ideas and discoveries, but his bold intelligence exceeded the limits of understanding of any human being of his time. Their dowries of visionary were amazing. For example, in the field of aviation. His studies on flying machines anticipated the effect of elevation and the one of propulsion, the stability and the balance. The wings that he outlined applied in the first airplanes. And his aerial sketches considers theoretical ancestor of the helicopter.

The man of the Vitruvio by Leonardo is a drawing by pen and ink, realised in a great leaf of paper (34 xs 24 cm.), that is conserved in the Academy of Venice, it was in its origin an illustration for a book titled Of Divine proportione (the divine proportion) of the Franciscan friar and innovating mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445 - 1517. He opened his colloquy on the divine proportion with a commentary on the proportions of the human body, observing that in the humanity.

All kinds of proportion and proportionality can be found and produced at the behest of god through the intimate mysteries of nature. Commentaries as this one makes clear why Leonardo would have found in Pacioli a mind in affection with his. For both the harmonic proportions of the human body were not more than one of the many intimate mysteries of the nature that reflected the perfection of  nature.

In his Studio (Real Academy of Venice), also known like the Vitruvio, Leonardo made a vision of the man like center of the universe, when being inside in a circle and squaring. The squared one is the base of the classic : the unit of the squared one is used in all the classic architecture, the use of the angle of ninety degrees are bases of the Latin- Greek architecture. In it an anatomical study is realized looking for the proportionality of human body, the classic or ideal canon of beauty. It follows the studies of Vituvrio"s architect (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) Roman architect of century I AC, to whom Julio Cesar, orders the construction of military machines. In time of Augusts  he wrote ten volumes of his work “Of Architecture”, that deals with about the hydraulic construction, solar quadrants, mechanics and its applications in civil architecture and military engineering. The man of Vitruvio is a clear example of the globalizing approach of Leonardo that development very quickly during second half of the decade of 1480. He tried to tie, the architecture and the human body, an aspect of his interpretation of nature and the place of the humanity in the “global plan of  things”.

Leonardo empirically corrects the errors of the measurements of Vitruvio, obtaining the measures, surpasses the old canon and recreates an illustration of the descriptions of Vitruvio that is considered until today the most perfect. The drawing represents a man in two different positions that correspond two phrases of the text.  The one that has the legs together and open and the extended arms horizontally illustrates the sentences written under the drawing: As much apre I'omo nelle braccia quanto è sua altezza, that is to say, the width of the extended arms of a man is equivalent to its height. The other figure, with the separated legs and the raised arms, expresses a specialized vitruviana rule more: “If you open the legs as much as to diminish your weight in 1/14 and raise the extended arms until the ends of the middle fingers are at the level of the top of your head, you will find that the center of your members extended is the navel and that the space between the legs is an equilateral triangle”.

The Anatomy

In the human body the central point is, by nature, the navel. Then if we located a man lied down on his back, with the extended hands and feet and a compass centered in the navel, the fingers of their hands and their feet touch the perimeter of a circle that we draw up from that point. And as well as the human body produces a circular contour also can be formed a figure squared from him. Since if we measured the distance between the plants of the feet to the arms and the crown and applied that measurement to the extended arms we will see that the width is just as the height, as it happens to the flat surfaces that are totally square.

Part of the force of the drawing resides in the interrelation of abstract geometry and the resulting physical reality of the observation. The body of the man is schematic but their contours and muscles are perfectly drawn. The feet seem to rest on a inferior line of the squared or to press the curve of the circle. The double figure produces the sensation of movement that could be the one of a gymnast or the one of a man who raised and lowered the arms like wings of a bird. The body is drawn with the clean and austere lines of a diagram, but the face appears tried about a very different way. It is more intensely worked, more dramatically shaded; it watches to us with angry expression. The characteristics in this sense respond to an ideal or prototype.

And, nevertheless, the whole drawing seems to be a realistic representation of those abstract biometrics symmetries, so that the severe personage enrolled in the circle turns out to be, not a number, but somebody, a man of penetrating eyes deeply shaded and thickens hair and curly combing with a line in the middle. It can to say that is at least some elements of self-portrait in “Man of Vitruvio”, the figure that represents the natural harmony also symbolizes the man equipped with an extraordinary capacity to understand it, to the artist-anatomist-architect who was Leonardo da Vinci.

The recognition on the part of the Master Leonardo of the concept of the divine proportion was reflected in his diverse anatomical works. He had the idea to realize a great work with detailed reproductions of the human body including studies of compared anatomy and physiology. The depth and rigor of their investigations took him to indicate the first theories on the muscular spasms in the cardiac valves. Some wanted to see in these inclinations a morbid motivation, but the certain thing is that Leonardo stayed faithful to his destiny: to be explorer of the knowledge.

A good example is the series of drawings that created in the final stage of his life under the title of “Visions of the end of the world”, where the fantasy and the reason reached an incomparable level. Leonardo felt attracted by all the natural sciences. By means of his precursory anatomical investigations he tried to understand the most recondite secrets of the body and to enter the same marrow of the creation, and in this process he arrived at a new understanding of the health and the treatment, understanding that amazingly prophesies the holistic approach of many present doctors , he wrote, and believed that to maintain a good health the harmonious integration of the elements of the body and the soul was essential.Thus, he practiced dissections in a hospital, anatomical works, observations of the flight of the birds and studies on the nature and the movement of the water. Fantasy and reason: These, indeed, were the ingredients that fed the spirit on one of the most fascinating personalities of history: Leonardo da Vinci.

The studies that did Leonardo Da Vinci, for its universality of its certainties that have served to contemporaries practitioners of the alternative medicine, among them doctor Dale Schusterman, one of the most efficient and mighty therapists of the new generation, settles down the foundation of the philosophy that underlies his work with a language extraordinarily similar to the Leonardo: "The human body and the model of energy that surrounds it is a miniature replica of a more comprehensive and universal order. This doctor express in his study that the great traditions of the knowledge, including the Jewish mysticism like cabala is based on the acceptance of which the human has been created to image of a cosmic being. Therefore, the humanity would have to be able, like Da Vinci, to see the cosmic design of our human form. Aside from which our form reflects a superior model, our human qualities like beings are the same like that the divine ones, like a drop of water contains the same properties that the ocean.

Therefore the forces that govern the cosmos in the macro level govern to the individual in the micro level. The life is one, and all forms are interrelated in enormously complicated whole, although inseparable one. The underlying unit transforms itself into a bridge between the microcosm and the macrocosms.  The Master Da Vinci tried to understand that the totality of the form and the substance of the man to deepen in what is life, what is the health. Remember that the the paradigm of healing determines the quality of life. If you cultivate an awareness of the unity of body, emotions, mind and spirit, you will discover a deeper sense of the fullness of the divine proportion

No 31 History of one of the most Famous Paintings

Emerging from Atlantis to the Sanctuary of the Spirit

Letter No. 31

HISTORY OF ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS

VÍCTOR MANUEL GUZMÁN VILLENA

The mural painted by Leonardo after a long and arduous study and three years of intense development, was so new, so original that would revolutionize the art of the West. Despite the ravages of time and the elements (for humidity and strong tempera technique used by Leonardo Da Vinci) and restored several times, there is still the traits of stupor, age, fear and character of the apostles in contrast with the white tablecloth and the colours of their garments.

The masterpiece of Leonardo Da Vinci astonished the humanity with its splendid grandeur and in recent years has been promoted to explore more in terms of symbolic and semiotic, due to the writer Dan Brown's novel entitled The Da Vinci Code and equally by the movie adaptation of the screenplay for this novel. His reading and fame has caused, like contagion, increased the interest in books related to the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci, paintings and his esoteric school of The Priory of Sion, and the legend of St. Grail, the pentacle and the number of gold.

On any given day, thousands of people come to the old monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, to admire a mural, painted 509 years ago that occupies a very special place in the culture of the world. The immortal Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, which represents the last supper of Jesus Christ with his disciples on the occasion of the Passover, has probably inspired more books, articles, poems and dissertations than any other piece of art, with the possible exception a portrait done by the same hand of the magician: The Mona Lisa. In truth, are known for the most of us the figures of Jesus and the apostles, as they appear in the dramatic painting, that the set would have been hardly more indelibly printed on our imagination if the work of Leonardo has a true representation of that biblical event.

Leonardo was 42 years old when Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, then the most powerful man in Italy, commissioned in 1494 to decorate the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the Duke had chosen the church's new monastery for their devotions , often stayed to take the midday meal with the Dominican friars in a vast domed chamber measuring 35 by nearly nine meters. For more than a century it was customary to decorate the convent refectories depicting the Last Supper, to remember the sacrifice of Christ to who started bread and drank wine. But no painter had been really fortunate to try so hard topic.

Although at the time the Italian Renaissance was going through its climax stage and the arts flourished in every corner of the sunny land of Italy, for Leonardo the painting was a secondary activity. Having already achieved great fame in his hometown Toscaza for his inventor genius, had entered the service of Duke as a military engineer, an expert on hydraulics and musician. When not engaged in designing machines of war or draw channels, studying mathematics, anatomy, dynamic botany perspective and the flight of birds. Most of his contemporaries thought he was a magician.

Leonardo was the magician who, along with the painter Leonardo, faced the north wall of the refectory where he painted the monumental figure of Christ seated at the table with his disciples. The murals from the same evangelical episode that can still be admired in Italy thirteen figures show relatively rigid and disconnected from one another, they say little of the human drama of the scene.

THE SECRET OF HIS MAGIC

Leonardo spent long hours studying the peasants that he had come to his studio, and well covered sheets and sheets of paper with notes of heads, hands, clothes. Only then began to represent the scene that he wanted. Said in his book of notes: "One has to drink and turned to pose the cup in place. Another intertwined fingers and re-gazing at his neighbour. Another open hands with palms outward, increasing the shoulders up his ears and mouth expresses amazement.

Leonardo was not satisfied with mere appearances."A good painter should paint two things," wrote later in his text on the art of painting: "The first thing is easy, the second difficult, therefore, it must be expressed through gestures and movement of the members. The mural painted by Leonardo after a long and arduous study and three years of intense development, was so new, so original that would revolutionize the art of the West. The painting occupies fully eight meters and a half of the wall, and the strength of the effect is partly due to its colossal dimensions.

Suspended over our heads, the figures are almost two meters tall. They are sturdy craftsmen and fishermen of Galilee, seated at a table long and narrow as the monks of the convent of refectories today. It is a dusk from the top of the spring. In the home of a wealthy Jerusalem has prepared a farewell dinner. Jesus Christ has just utter the words: "One of you will treason me", which has resulted in his twelve companions the effect of lightning. These, grouped in threes, are four agitated clusters, two on each side of the master. Even we believe to hear what they say. Philip, the third to the left of Jesus, seems to protest: “You know me; I am innocent”. " It is clear that the Thaddeus fifth to the left of Jesus Christ is saying to his neighbor, dug Simon: I knew it! There are a traitor among us!

Peter is tilted toward his left side to ask to his companion of the table the Lord who is the traitor; impatient, he plays on the shoulder of the personage, while his right hand holds a knife. Hence we look at the snatched whole body of the astute fisherman and whom soon betray him three times. . John, "the beloved disciple of Jesus," is the most beautiful of the group. But that character is also woman's face, it may be Mary Magdalene, her companion (here's all the magic and mystery of the play) is the youngest and most beautiful of the group sat to the right of the Master, tilted his head in silent grief , Making an eloquent contrast to the rough impetuosity of Peter. But only Leonardo could paint it that way. Study in depth the principles masculine and feminine and obtaining the balance among them. Reminds us the tantra yoga, in which male and female join together to become something divine that transcend gender.

Here we can be asked: if Leonardo had some information of the content of the Gospel of Judas. Since the first reading the Gospel of Judas is revealed as a document clearly Gnostic. The Eastern Gnosticism was a philosophy that reached its greatest strength around the century 2 and 3 of the common era, and borrowed several elements of Judaism and Christianity. The later documents in the New Testament shows the first clashes with Gnosticism, but it is up to the century two when the Gnostic begin to produce dozens of "Gospels" and that confrontation occurs in all their extension. For Gnosticism, summarized, the world is the creation of an evil god, the god of the Old Testament, and human beings are emanations of the true God, much more powerful and ancient, divine spark trapped in corruptible bodies and unimportant.

Hence the marking asceticism and denial of the body is a key aspect of Gnosticism. It is only through a secret knowledge that reaches the true liberation and reintegration into the cosmos and everything. The document is a papyrus, dating from the fourth century, but is believed to be a translation of a Greek text of the year 187. Most of the biblical gospels were written, what is believed between 50 and 80 years after the crucifixion of Christ. It is written in Coptic, the ancient language of Egyptian Christians, the document was reportedly discovered in the late 70s in Egypt, in a limestone tomb very deteriorated. . Since then it has passed through the hands of several antique shops, many of them ignorant of their true importance.

The manuscript reproduced allegedly talks between the two men and pointed clearly that by betraying Christ, Judas was in compliance with a divine mission. It has also been able to determine that according to this gospel, Christ gave instructions to Judas to betray him with the following words: "Thou shalt be the apostle cursed by all others. You, Judas, offer the sacrifice of this body of the man that I am covered. In another hugely significant part of the manuscript, Jesus tells Judas: "Thou shalt be the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by generations, and come to reign over them

Despite the turmoil prevailing, the two halves of the set are beautifully balanced. On the other aspect, the four major groups are intertwined by their hands, forming a bridge from one group to another. Those hands point to the figure of the Master, calm center of that storm. His head is framed by soft blue light of the evanescent landscape that looks through the open door behind Jesus, reflects a spiritual excels makes that figure one of the most beautiful have been painted ever.

Matteo Bandello The writer, whose stories were later inspire some dramas of Shakespeare, was a student at the convent at the time that Leonardo was painting the mural. "I watched Leonardo," he writes, "who worked from dawn to dusk, a time without leaving the brush. Then came two, three or four days when they did not do anything but sit for an hour or two looking at the painting and tried to examine their figures. Leonardo had been engaged for many years to the new science of perspective, and in this case brilliantly solved the problem of creating an illusion of depth. . Go back to the viewer, away from the wall, and you will find that the room represented in painting, with its open windows, is an integral part of the same refectory. Follow with eyes the lines leading to the heart of the mural (the beams of the roof, the edges of the table) and verify that intersect in the right temple of Jesus, strongly appeal that attracts the gaze toward the master. Thus, for the monks who took the food in that place, Jesus Christ and the apostles ate not in the wall, but with themselves.

The illusion helps the care with which Leonardo painted objects even less important: the tablecloth, gold in a style that is still in Italy, the pewter dishes, glasses, in a word the same utensils that the monks were using in their table. Glossy red wine in the glasses, the bread seems fresh, and fish, fruit and the remains of ram tell us what has been the menu. The table of the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci is also one of the greatest died natures of the world.

PERENNIAL OF GREATNESS

Finished painting in 1498, the Duke rewarded Leonardo with a vast property. From the artist's death, which occurred in 1519, the famous mural has been reproduced in fresco, oil paintings, mosaic, ivory and silver. Long before photography was born, the masterpiece had been issued at all sites of encounter of people through engravings in black and white and gaudy chromium. Goethe dedicated one of his most brilliant essays, the English poet William Wordsworth sang "Grace serene, ethereal, love that splendid in the face of the savior." Ironically, to create their immortal works, Leonardo put in it the seeds of which had been destroyed. Usually, the murals painted at fresco.

This unique technique consists in mixing pigment with water to apply it directly on the cast fresh and moist, to absorb the paint, turns partly to this an integral part of the wall, and so the freshness of the color is preserved through the centuries. But the fresco painters must work quickly before the wall to dry, while Leonardo wanted to move slowly.

To that end, first applied a surface of white stucco on the plaster, then painted in tempera on dry surface, as if painted on wood or canvas. In a dry room this method might have given a good result, but the city of Milan is famous for its moisture. As the moisture condensed on the cold wall, the stucco that served as a basis for the painting began to decompose and form blisters that break up in flakes. They had not spent 20 years and visitors commented deterioration of the mural.

That was how lots of details disappeared forever that appear in old copies, for example, the salt cellar that Judas knock over with the elbow. In addition, the intervention of a series of improvised restaurateurs, many of whom are charlatans who wore "secrets"remedies, hastened the destruction of the mural. Was applied oil, new paint, varnish. Completed the Second World War, was made a full and thorough restoration of the work. Took off seven superfluous layers of paint before reaching the original brushstrokes. When complete, nearly all the splendid colors of Leonardo (the red robes of Jesus and Magdalene, the blue of the meandering river in the distance) they shone with a magnificence forgotten centuries ago.

The monastery, along with the pictorial treasure, is now owned by the Italian government. Although the current visitor sees almost no more than a ghost of what was the original light of Leonardo, the image of the Last Supper is complete. As much as it beauty has faded in part, the mural retains its grandeur and, defying the time and its destructive agents, continues to exert his magic power over the generations.