• In total there are 3 users online :: 1 registered, 0 hidden and 2 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 729 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 2:33 am

The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Engage in conversations about worldwide religions, cults, philosophy, atheism, freethought, critical thinking, and skepticism in this forum.
Forum rules
Do not promote books in this forum. Instead, promote your books in either Authors: Tell us about your FICTION book! or Authors: Tell us about your NON-FICTION book!.

All other Community Rules apply in this and all other forums.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

I've listed to lectures on Da Vinci's Last Supper - both the making and meaning of it.

In one lecture titled 'Who was Leonardo - Facts and Fictions' Professor George R. Bent (Washington & Lee University B.A. from Oberlin College in 1985, Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University - 1993. cofounder of Washington and Lee's interdisciplinary program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies in 1995, chairman from 2000 to 2003. served as Associate Dean from 2003 to 2006; currently serves as chair of the Department of Art and Art History. scholarly work focus on issues of artistic production, the function of liturgical images, and institutional patronage in early Renaissance Florence) indicates there is no written evidence of personal religious sentiments indicating any opposition whatsoever to the papacy of the time, nor is there evidence of hidden messages of sedition or rebellion. The items in the painting that lead some conspiracy theorists and astrologers are actually the most tradition features of the time.

Placing Leonardo's masterpiece in its proper historical context, the painting was one of several of Da Vinci's commissions, The Last Supper being a painting for a monastic refectory.

Paintings of the The Last Supper during Leo's time referred to concepts of leadership and obedience.
Community members would connect the image of Christ and his disciples to the actual prior, abbot, or abbess of their respective community. Diners eating in refectories were normally positioned beneath the painting, quietly eating while listening to a brethren reading scripture, or making a daily announcement(s).

Paintings of the Last Supper were created with the specific goal of illustrating the scriptural passages that describe the event. Leonardo's masterpiece adheres strictly to the biblical passages that narrate it.

Christ naturally occupies the heart of the composition. His head is placed in the middle of a triple window that more than likely refers to the Trinity.

"Reading" the painting from left to right (as Da Vinci desired), the two sets of six disciples form a crescendo of physical and emotional reactions - from subdued to an explosion of physical energy.

Christ is separated by gaps that Da Vinci intentionally made to emphasize the gulf between the Son of God (not the sun) from mortals.

Leonardo's intention was to have a single painting that encourages the viewers to use their memories and deductive skills to piece together fragments of the story being shown, and in so doing, reconstructing of an expansive, sweeping narrative.

There is a long history of this sort of imagery in Italian art. One example is "Man of Sorrows" (Monaco) that manages to allude to the chalice of the Last Supper, along with the 30 pieces of silver, the arrest of Christ, Peter's denial, beating of Christ, Pilates washing of his hands of the matter, etc.

It is believed that Leonardo was to have painted on the opposite a portrait of the Crucifixion. A narrative of the Crucifixion would have been a commission that naturally followed during Leonardo's time.

The painter and historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his treatise "The Lives of the Artists" includes some of the earliest biographies of masters of the IR like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. There is no documentation to my knowledge from either Vasari, or Da Vinci himself (who wrote much of his thoughts down) indicating he was into astrology or attempted to embed zodiac symbolism within any of his masterpieces. It wasn't even mentioned in the slightest by professor Bent.

I'll take Bent's scholarship over Wikipedia any day of the week.
Last edited by ant on Sat Sep 20, 2014 6:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

The Last Supper is not a true fresco.

Leonardo did not like the tradition fresco method because it required the artist to work in a hurry.
Da Vinci did not like to be rushed.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6497
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2717 times
Been thanked: 2659 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Hi ant, thanks very much for this comment. I had been meaning to open up further discussion here, so this is a good prompt. I watched a documentary about Leonardo on TV a few months ago, and it emphasised his method of fidelity to nature, and commented that The Last Supper achieves its dynamism through ensuring a highly natural approach.

In this thread I have explained how Leonardo da Vinci used the ‘as above so below’ motif central to Gnostic philosophy to portray Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles on the model of the path of the sun through the course of the year. This motif of reflection between the cosmos and history is central to Christianity, with the Lord’s Prayer calling for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. So we see that Leonardo actually used the real scientific model of the structure of time, the path of the sun through the stars, as his direct template for the poses of all the characters, in a way that directly emerges from the widespread medieval cosmology of Christianity.

What remains utterly perplexing and disturbing to me is that I am presenting a simple and clear major scientific and historical discovery, readily apparent to anyone who studies it with just a modicum of care. And yet, despite several people commenting in this thread and elsewhere that it is obviously correct, there has been no publicity or circulation whatsoever, as though it is just some arbitrary seeing of animals in clouds.

The lessons of this failure to see what this thread explains indicates the severe pathology surrounding religion. Originally, Christianity was natural. But the cooption of the church by the military security apparatus of the Roman Empire inculcated a mass delusion, within the framework of the false doctrines of supernaturalism. All natural Gnostic teachings were systematically burnt, with their traces only remaining by chance in the works of hostile critics, and some very rare texts. We do not by any means have a clear picture of the origins of Christianity in the extant historical record. It is as Winston Smith said in Orwell’s 1984, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, because all the records of the former peace with Eastasia have been systematically eradicated by government decree.

People cannot believe the depravity of the psychology that expunged all possible trace of Christianity’s origins. It is as Hitler said, a big enough lie will be believed. So when clear ‘smoking gun’ evidence of this model is shown in Leonardo’s Last Supper, the systematic denial comes into play, what Orwell called ‘crimestop’, the ability to suppress a line of thought that will lead to an unacceptable conclusion. In this case the conclusion is that Christ and the twelve apostles have their ground in the readily observed one to twelve temporal relation between the observed movements of the sun and the moon, with the year and twelve months.

Each of the twelve in The Last Supper is modelled on the stars behind the moon for one successive month of the year, from right to left, as per Leonardo’s mirror writing. Anyone who cannot see this after studying it carefully is suffering from psychological blockage.
ant wrote:I've listed to lectures on Da Vinci's Last Supper - both the making and meaning of it. In one lecture titled 'Who was Leonardo - Facts and Fictions' Professor George R. Bent (Washington & Lee University B.A. from Oberlin College in 1985, Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University - 1993. cofounder of Washington and Lee's interdisciplinary program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies in 1995, chairman from 2000 to 2003. served as Associate Dean from 2003 to 2006; currently serves as chair of the Department of Art and Art History. scholarly work focus on issues of artistic production, the function of liturgical images, and institutional patronage in early Renaissance Florence) indicates there is no written evidence of personal religious sentiments indicating any opposition whatsoever to the papacy of the time, nor is there evidence of hidden messages of sedition or rebellion. The items in the painting that lead some conspiracy theorists and astrologers are actually the most tradition features of the time.
I agree there is nothing seditious or rebellious in any of Leonardo’s work. And indeed, the zodiac symbolism (which contains no astrology) is entirely traditional. I recently visited France, where this same motif of the twelve apostles and the twelve months of the year figures prominently in traditional art work at the major cathedrals of Chartres, St Denis and Amiens. So Leonardo is continuing a highly prominent tradition. Why then do people deny it?

Modernism and modern Christianity have a shared pathology of denial regarding some major tenets of medieval thought. In particular, the modern concept of freedom is understood to require the elimination of any fatalistic ideas. This attitude actually has ancient antecedents with the emotional and political hostility to perceived magical practices. So this cult has developed that says anything associated with magic is evil, leading to the wholesale suppression of the philosophical tradition of Gnosticism which was based on the true scientific premise that events on earth reflect events in the broader cosmos that forms the whole of which the earth is a part.

Leonardo was extremely careful to protect himself against the evil maniacs of the Inquisition, in view of the prevalent attitude that heresy was a capital crime. So he carefully concealed his real knowledge, presenting an actual ‘Da Vinci Code’ based in a simple portrayal of the Gnostic wisdom of ‘as above so below’, while refraining from any overt challenge to the majesty of the church.
ant wrote: Placing Leonardo's masterpiece in its proper historical context, the painting was one of several of Da Vinci's commissions, The Last Supper being a painting for a monastic refectory.

Paintings of the The Last Supper during Leo's time referred to concepts of leadership and obedience.
Community members would connect the image of Christ and his disciples to the actual prior, abbot, or abbess of their respective community. Diners eating in refectories were normally positioned beneath the painting, quietly eating while listening to a brethren reading scripture, or making a daily announcement(s).
Leadership and obedience is just one small and superficial theme within The Last Supper. Of course Christ is the leader and the twelve are his followers. However, the privileging of this theme reflects the political desire of the church to maintain its own social standing within the hierarchical system of the alliance of throne and altar. Behind this trope of political control and stability stands a deeper concept of obedience, a transformative messianic demand for obedience to the higher truth revealed in Christ.

Similarly, the church falsely translated the ‘turn the other cheek’ injunction in the Sermon on the Mount as a call for submission, where a more accurate reading indicates it is a call for non-violent defiance against imperial thugs. There are many such examples in Christianity where a widely assumed tradition is actually based on a Machiavellian scheming that has subverted the original moral intent.
ant wrote:
Paintings of the Last Supper were created with the specific goal of illustrating the scriptural passages that describe the event. Leonardo's masterpiece adheres strictly to the biblical passages that narrate it.
But it is not exhausted by those passages. Yes, we see Peter’s hidden sword (the scorpion’s sting) and Judas holding his bag of thirty pieces of silver, but both figures are exactly modelled on the eighth and ninth constellations of the solar year. The placement of Judas’ head over Peter’s heart conveys a symbolic irony about the treachery of the church, but this meaning that Peter has betrayed Christ in his heart is hardly to be found in the extant texts. The finger pointing to heaven, modelled on the stars of Virgo, reflects a Gnostic Platonic call for people to actually look up at the sky. This is something Christ does in order to perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes in Mark 8, but it is a natural theme that has largely been suppressed by supernatural tradition.
ant wrote:
Christ naturally occupies the heart of the composition. His head is placed in the middle of a triple window that more than likely refers to the Trinity.

"Reading" the painting from left to right (as Da Vinci desired), the two sets of six disciples form a crescendo of physical and emotional reactions - from subdued to an explosion of physical energy.
You have no basis to assert that Leonardo desired us to read from left to right. His mirror writing method indicates it is more likely he would convey meaning from right to left. And indeed, the shape of each apostle matches exactly to the stars of the path of the sun through the year from right to left in this painting, as direct empirical confirmation. So this ‘left to right’ claim is nothing but empty and false assertion aimed at capturing Leonardo for the church.
ant wrote:
Christ is separated by gaps that Da Vinci intentionally made to emphasize the gulf between the Son of God (not the sun) from mortals.
The apostles stand in four groups of three, representing the four seasons. From right to left, these are spring, summer, autumn and winter. Asserting that Leonardo used this painting to convey dogmatic supernatural messages about Jesus as Son is false. Christ is actually modelled on the stars of the constellation Pisces, reflecting Leonardo’s awareness that at the time of Christ the position of the sun at the spring equinox moved from Aries into Pisces, making Christ the Avatar of the Age of Pisces. This solar imagery of Christ is central to the painting, in structure and meaning.
ant wrote:
Leonardo's intention was to have a single painting that encourages the viewers to use their memories and deductive skills to piece together fragments of the story being shown, and in so doing, reconstructing of an expansive, sweeping narrative.
Yes, that is exactly right. Putting together the pieces of Gnostic religion, mirroring nature, observation of the sun and moon as the two lights in one to twelve relation, requires use of memory and deduction to find the real intent of this painting. The expansive sweeping narrative is how Christ was originally invented as solar myth, but this real origin was suppressed by the empire in order to co-opt Christianity as a basis for military security, and yet how the sublime wisdom behind the literal public story can still be recaptured to enable Christianity to achieve its rightful status as a rational scientific understanding of reality.
ant wrote:
There is a long history of this sort of imagery in Italian art. One example is "Man of Sorrows" (Monaco) that manages to allude to the chalice of the Last Supper, along with the 30 pieces of silver, the arrest of Christ, Peter's denial, beating of Christ, Pilates washing of his hands of the matter, etc.
The Last Supper by Leonardo does not allude to the chalice, Pilate, beating or denial. The relevant antecedents for The Last Supper do include the simple depictions of religious piety, but also the cosmology seen in the very widespread icon of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by the symbols of the four corners of heaven, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius.
ant wrote:
It is believed that Leonardo was to have painted on the opposite a portrait of the Crucifixion. A narrative of the Crucifixion would have been a commission that naturally followed during Leonardo's time.

The painter and historian Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his treatise "The Lives of the Artists" includes some of the earliest biographies of masters of the IR like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphaeil. There is no documentation to my knowledge from either Vasari, or Da Vinci himself (who wrote much of his thoughts down) indicating he was into astrology or attempted to embed zodiac symbolism within any of his masterpieces. It wasn't even mentioned in the slightest by professor Bent.
It is hardly surprising that a Professor who is primarily concerned for his academic reputation would fail to mention a revolutionary thesis about the Last Supper that he knows nothing about and that overturns established dogma. The discovery in this thread is my original work. As readers can see, a number of others comment that it is obvious, but no one has done anything to present it in peer reviewed literature or popular media. I think people understand that such ideas will meet a hostile reaction of mockery, condescension and ridicule, due to the cultural power of prejudice and the links with various traditions with weak scientific status. But those complaints of guilt by association are strictly ad hominem, and fail to engage with the findings here.

Leonardo was part of the Renaissance movement in Florence started by the translation of Plato, including the famous fivures Marcilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. On the secrecy issue, debates about science were very live in his day. Leonardo would have been well aware of the fate of his compatriot Pico Della Mirandola who it appears died as a result of promoting natural philosophy, just a decade before Leonardo painted The Last Supper. Associating the stars of the zodiac with this painting would have been immensely controversial, so his lack of discussion of it is to be expected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oration_on ... ity_of_Man and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico- ... la/#WorRep explain Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsilio_Ficino is well worth a read to understand the intellectual context of the synthesis of Christianity and Platonism in the Florence of Leonardo’s time.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

I have some thoughts I want to share that are responsive to some of what youve written above.

I will need to be at my computer when I do. Probably early tomorrow.

I have several points I'd like to make and perhaps show with links.
I can only do so much on my phone now.

Good topic.
Thanks.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

This is from the wiki link in your post that started this thread:
A less well known fact is that Leonardo had intensively studied a variety of mystic and spiritual teachings and that the twelve apostles are a symbolic portrayal of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Question: What is the source that established this claim as fact?
Have you read McClusky's book?
Was the source Vasari's The Lives of the Artists? Leonardo's various manuscripts, The Codex Atlanticus?
Or perhaps Leonardo's assistant Francesco Melzi, whom Leonardo bequeathed thousands of manuscripts too?

Leonardo was largely silent (nearly completely, for that matter) about his religious convictions. In the lectures it was mentioned that he more than likely was agnostic. He alluded to this in some of his manuscripts.

I need to fact check the claim that Leonardo "intensively studied a variety of mystic and spiritual teachings"

I may not have to remind you of this, Robert, but..,

Leonardo had enormous mental energy. He occupied himself a great deal with art, architecture, engineering, optics, anatomy, sculpture, and machine inventions. He also was a musician for a time!
He was a military adviser and an intellectual courtier.
Perhaps what many do not know is that although known primarily as a painter, that was an area where he produced the least!!

The evidence for all of Leonardo's intellectual endeavors (above) can be found in his surviving works and are well documented in the archival sources I've mentioned already.
If Leonardo did in fact have an intense interest in mystic and spiritual teachings, why is it not clearly articulated in either his art or manuscripts? To my knowledge, it's not.

If the response to this is that it would have been dangerous for him to express these specific interests, why do we have his anatomical drawings and notes on dissection, which was for Leonardo a great risk to practice at the time (the church did not allow dissection)?

Robert wrote:
In this thread I have explained how Leonardo da Vinci used the ‘as above so below’ motif central to Gnostic philosophy to portray Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles on the model of the path of the sun through the course of the year. This motif of reflection between the cosmos and history is central to Christianity, with the Lord’s Prayer calling for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. So we see that Leonardo actually used the real scientific model of the structure of time, the path of the sun through the stars, as his direct template for the poses of all the characters, in a way that directly emerges from the widespread medieval cosmology of Christianity
.

I agree and disagree with what you've written above.

Leonardo was the first to use a scientific approach when capturing man and nature with his magnificent artistic eye.
His novel addition of background landscapes by sfumato technique is evidence of his scientific approach to drawing. As it his triangular grouping of characters is the classic composition found frequently during the high Renaissance. Leonardo's use of linear perspective in some of his portraits are also evidence for his scientific mindfulness.

More importantly, given the fact that Leonardo was much more prolific in other fields of knowledge, his scientific mind was expressed with greater vigor elsewhere.

If Leonardo at any time in his artistic practice would have wanted to express the "as above, so below" motif, it would undoubtedly have been in a commission or an independent portrait that clearly pronounced it. Leonardo did not have to hide expressions or code them in his art. He was innovative and bold. Case in point, Leonardo's decision to paint women in frontal postures, with psychological and intellectual presence - unheard of and totally unprecedented at the time.

Perhaps what might be related to a religious motif is The Vitruvian Man. But that even seems highly doubtful.

In the drawing The Vitruvian Man the circle was considered perfect because it had neither a beginning nor an end; to Christians, it had the added symbolic meaning of an eternal life. The square represents perfect earthly balance and
symmetry, a reference to God’s desire to construct a similarly balanced /symmetrical world.

But here is where The Vitruvian Man is a dead end for you if you had wanted to introduce it as an expression of a religious motif. Leonardo's notes about Vitruvian man state that it is also about architecture. Human proportions not only give us practical units of measurement; they also relate the circle to a square. Leonardo was working out his ideas about perfection,
both for the human body as an artistic form and architecture as a reflection of human potential.

Leonardo's Vitruvian Man is mostly an expression of architecture and mathematics.


Robert wrote:
What remains utterly perplexing and disturbing to me is that I am presenting a simple and clear major scientific and historical discovery, readily apparent to anyone who studies it with just a modicum of care. And yet, despite several people commenting in this thread and elsewhere that it is obviously correct, there has been no publicity or circulation whatsoever, as though it is just some arbitrary seeing of animals in clouds.

The lessons of this failure to see what this thread explains indicates the severe pathology surrounding religion. Originally, Christianity was natural. But the cooption of the church by the military security apparatus of the Roman Empire inculcated a mass delusion,
First of all, can you cite a source (authored at the time in question) that has documented Leonardo was influenced by the cooption of the church by Roman authority to the extent he felt compelled to hide Gnostic symbolism in his drawings?

What did influence Leonardo's drawings were the works of Massaccio.

Linear and triangular compositions changed the way painting was done. Leonardo followed this method masterfully in his handful of portraits depicting the most common religious themes of the Renaissance. Narrative moments of the most meaningful scriptural accounts were heavily sought by patrons who could afford the works of the most talented artists at the time. Paintings of the Madonna and child were purchased sometimes as items of good fortune for women who were about to give birth (the death rate was high).
Paintings of Mary and Joseph were purchased by married couples to place in their bedroom to be looked at during sex. The man looking at Joseph would help cause the birth of a son, Mary, the birth of a daughter.

Last Supper paintings were enormously popular and scattered throughout Italy. They were painted on the walls of monasteries for monks to sit under while eating. Depending on how the monks would sit at the dinner table is what determined the Last Supper's character positions.. That's really what that's all about, Robert. Some Last Supper portraits portray circular seating. Some do not.
But the theological statement is portrayed as best as the artist could.

Important FACT!

By Leonardo's day, and prior to his Last Supper masterpiece, refectory Last Suppers had developed a particular tradition. Taddeo Gaddi who painted his version around 1355 established the template: a linear structure with figures stretched out behind the table like actors on a stage. Each figure is individuated and face the viewers of the diners at the refectory.
There is no evidence to my knowledge that Leonardo's character portrayals and their physical expressions mean nothing more than the religious narrative that Leonardo was attempting to depict.

Robert wrote:

The Last Supper by Leonardo does not allude to the chalice, Pilate, beating or denia


I know that. You must have misunderstood me.


Robert wrote:

Leonardo was part of the Renaissance movement in Florence started by the translation of Plato, including the famous fivures Marcilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. On the secrecy issue, debates about science were very live in his day. Leonardo would have been well aware of the fate of his compatriot Pico Della Mirandola who it appears died as a result of promoting natural philosophy, just a decade before Leonardo painted The Last Supper. Associating the stars of the zodiac with this painting would have been immensely controversial, so his lack of discussion of it is to be expected.


The only recorded evidence there is for Leonardo participating in public debate is for his promotion of art and his desire for it to have its place among the seven classical liberal arts - grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

In his manuscripts, Leonardo states the following: (emphasis mine)

I know well that, not being a man of letters, it will appear to some presumptuous people that they can reasonably belabor me with the allegation that I am a man without learning. But they do not grasp that my concerns are better handled through experience rather than bookishness. Though I might not know, like them, how to cite from the authors, I will cite something far more worthy, quoting experience, mistress of their masters. I say that anyone who argues on the basis of ancient authorities does not exploit his insight, but rather his memory


If Leonardo's cognitive abilities were truly that of what we now otherwise identify as a highly rational, scientific thinker, why in heaven's name would Leonardo waste his time hiding astrological coding in paintings with common scriptural themes of the time in question? Gnosticism would have been outdated authority to Leonardo.
Also, Leonardo valued experience more than ancient authoritative doctrine (so it seems). He was speculated as being the first man to paint portraits in a natural environment.

Leonardo was the quintessential Renaissance man. An uncontroverted genius. You seem to discount his genius, in my opinion. His few paintings are not only beautiful portraits of human beings that follow along with the religious narrative at the time , they are also scientific and natural (landscape) studies that mimic how the eye sees nature (sfumato).
Why the need for all the additional speculation?
Seems totally superfluous to me.

EDITED (BOLD AND UNDERLINED) - minor
Last edited by ant on Mon Sep 22, 2014 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

I want to bring something specific in Leonardo's works;

Professor Bent refers to this painting as "The Confrontational John the Baptist.

The painting and the meaning has puzzled art historians (according to Bent) for some years now.
It is a bold portrayal of John the Baptist, who, in holding up his finger to heaven, is looking directly at the viewer of the painting and appears to be saying "Ecce Agnus Domini" ( Behold, the lamb of God).

Here's what Professor Bent actually says in his outline:
His (John) position recalls his first meeting with Christ as an adult, during Christ’s baptism: John sees the dove of the Holy Spirit over Christ’s head and says, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Remarkably, John’s position in this painting addresses the viewer as Jesus.
Sfumato returns in this portrait, as does the tenebristic style that dominates Leonardo's first Milanese period.
It seems that wherever Leonardo is he adopted the style of the area (Northern Italy, he adopted dramatic portraiture, in southern Italy he reverted to rich landscapes).


If Leonardo was trying to say something controversial in this painting, it likely reflects what Bent hypothesizes below: (emphasis mine)
Leonardo strives to achieve a personal connection between the viewer and the image, with a religious link binding the two together. But this personal connection almost seems to invite the bypassing of intermediaries—like priests and church officials—to achieve personal redemption from heavenly figures. It invites us to wonder whether the move northward is affecting not only his approach to painting, but also his approach to the church.
If Leonardo did have religious convictions, they were undoubtedly multifaceted and not specific to any particular creed.
Most geniuses of Leonardo's caliber are highly complex individuals. It's not likely he would either implicitly or explicitly promote astrology in any of his paintings or writings.

Image
Last edited by ant on Mon Sep 22, 2014 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6497
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2717 times
Been thanked: 2659 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

ant wrote:This is from the wiki link in your post that started this thread:
A less well known fact is that Leonardo had intensively studied a variety of mystic and spiritual teachings and that the twelve apostles are a symbolic portrayal of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Question: What is the source that established this claim as fact?
Leonardo was part of the Italian Renaissance, a movement largely based on the recovery of Platonic and Hermetic Philosophy, ancient traditions that were mystical and spiritual. In his Notebooks Leonardo wrote “Hermes the Philosopher”, referencing the great mystical tradition of Gnostic thought, and discussed the mystical theory of correspondence between the human body and the natural cycles of the earth.

I cited the link from http://wiki.astro.com/astrowiki/en/Leon ... ast_Supper because it also analyses The Last Supper as based on the zodiac from right to left, although it does not do so empirically as I do in this thread. Later in the thread I provide extensive evidence regarding the widespread link between the twelve apostles and the signs of the zodiac.
ant wrote: Have you read McClusky's book?
When I google McClusky Leonardo da Vinci I only get your post.
ant wrote: Was the source Vasari's The Lives of the Artists? Leonardo's various manuscripts, The Codex Atlanticus? Or perhaps Leonardo's assistant Francesco Melzi, whom Leonardo bequeathed thousands of manuscripts too?
Leonardo’s Notebooks provide evidence of his adherence to Hermetic philosophy. These are topics covered already in some detail in this thread, especially the supreme mystical idea that man is a microcosm of the macrocosm. An online biography of Pico Della Mirandola at http://faculty.ccri.edu/paleclerc/prism ... dola.shtml
provides a good insight into Leonardo’s method: “his synthetic, open, and exploratory approach to learning is valuable and viable today. Consequently, we subscribe to his far-reaching thesis: "Realize that everything connects to everything else."
ant wrote: Leonardo was largely silent (nearly completely, for that matter) about his religious convictions.
It is quite different to say Leonardo’s religious writings have not survived than to say he was silent. His religious artwork indicates that a picture speaks a thousand words.
ant wrote: If Leonardo did in fact have an intense interest in mystic and spiritual teachings, why is it not clearly articulated in either his art or manuscripts? To my knowledge, it's not. If the response to this is that it would have been dangerous for him to express these specific interests, why do we have his anatomical drawings and notes on dissection, which was for Leonardo a great risk to practice at the time (the church did not allow dissection)?
Anatomy was recognised by subsequent science, but mysticism was not. Only a small proportion of Leonardo’s Notebooks survived. As with Sir Isaac Newton, it is likely that many hylic readers found the spiritual content of his genius incomprehensible. The savage idiocy of the church attitude towards Pico flowed through into scientific hostility towards mysticism, leading to explicit work being lost. The fact is that we do have a concealed mystical code in The Last Supper which requires explanation. Saying the code is not there is like saying the earth is flat.
ant wrote: If Leonardo at any time in his artistic practice would have wanted to express the "as above, so below" motif, it would undoubtedly have been in a commission or an independent portrait that clearly pronounced it. Leonardo did not have to hide expressions or code them in his art.
You are completely missing the point that Leonardo actually did hide a coded portrayal of the cosmos in The Last Supper. Denying that is like taking the Catholic side in Galileo’s dispute with churchmen who refused to look through his telescope because they were scared of what their eyes would reveal to plain sense.

Max May’s youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... r5_S-EiDGg provides direct proof of how Leonardo used the stars as his template for The Last Supper. Denying this is like denying that Jupiter has moons on the principle of perfection of celestial spheres. The obsolete principle is wrong, and is refuted by the evidence. We have to explain the evidence, not just deny it on principle.
ant wrote: The Vitruvian Man is a dead end for you if you had wanted to introduce it as an expression of a religious motif.
Do feel free to arrogantly dismiss the Encyclopedia Brittanica on this then. As I said earlier in this thread, the Vitruvian Man represents a cornerstone of Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopaedia Britannica online states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe."
ant wrote: can you cite a source (authored at the time in question) that has documented Leonardo was influenced by the cooption of the church by Roman authority to the extent he felt compelled to hide Gnostic symbolism in his drawings?
Again, the simple and irrefutable fact, which your question entirely begs, is that Leonardo did in fact use the star path of the sun as his template for The Last Supper. Any questions that assume this may be untrue are the intellectual equivalent of assuming the earth is flat. My point here is to investigate how and why Leonardo used this method, not whether he in fact did use it, since that is incontrovertible.

Apologist critiques that ignore the vast legacy of church suppression of innovative and enlightened thought are not relevant.
ant wrote: There is no evidence to my knowledge that Leonardo's character portrayals and their physical expressions mean nothing more than the religious narrative that Leonardo was attempting to depict.
There is abundant evidence throughout this thread (assuming you meant the opposite of what you actually say here with the grammatical error of the double negative). You are just deliberately ignoring the evidence, displaying your religious pathology. Your logic appears to be "it could not be true therefore it is not true". That is similar to other obsolete opinions such as geocentrism and creationism which start with an untrue principle and then apply evangelical rhetoric to defend it.
ant wrote: If Leonardo's cognitive abilities were truly that of what we now otherwise identify as a highly rational, scientific thinker, why in heaven's name would Leonardo waste his time hiding astrological coding in paintings with common scriptural themes of the time in question? Gnosticism would have been outdated authority to Leonardo.
Gnosticism was the enlightened original movement of genius that created Christianity. This whole original framework was cast into the outer darkness by the foolish political ignorance of the church. Leonardo was part of the Gnostic scientific tradition, centred on the ‘on earth as in heaven’ motif of The Lord's Prayer that understood mythology as symbolic depiction of natural observation.

His motive in this painting was to show that Jesus Christ is allegory for the sun, which is the real source of light and life. This agenda points to a sublime restoration of enlightened ethics in Christianity.

In fact there is no astrology in The Last Supper, it is only direct scientific astronomy. But Christians cannot understand the distinction here because of their irrational tendency to go into emotional meltdown at the mere mention of the zodiac, so they insist on sowing confusion.
ant wrote: Also, Leonardo valued experience more than ancient authoritative doctrine (so it seems). He was speculated as being the first man to paint portraits in a natural environment. Leonardo was the quintessential Renaissance man. An uncontroverted genius. You seem to discount his genius, in my opinion. His few paintings are not only beautiful portraits of human beings that follow along with the religious narrative at the time , they are also scientific and natural (landscape) studies that mimic how the eye sees nature (sfumato).
Why the need for all the additional speculation? Seems totally superfluous to me.
Leonardo’s actual genius is revealed in his use of the symbolism of The Last Supper to depict the actual structure of terrestrial time, seen in the course of the sun through the year. That is not speculation, any more than Galileo was speculating about seeing the moons of Jupiter. It is entirely based on scientific experience and observation and logic.

This observation of the actual method and intent in The Last Supper is a basis for a paradigm shift to put Christianity on a natural basis and explain all the supernatural mythology as allegory. Inability to see this new finding just shows how deeply entrenched the false paradigm of supernatural faith has become, in its blanket denial of plain facts.
User avatar
Robert Tulip

2B - MOD & SILVER
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6497
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:16 pm
18
Location: Canberra
Has thanked: 2717 times
Been thanked: 2659 times
Contact:
Australia

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Bertold Brecht in The Life of Galileo wrote:GALILEO at the telescope: As your Highness doubtless knows for some time past we astronomers have been in great difficulties with our calculations. For these we use a very old system which appears to coincide with philosophy, but not, alas, with facts. According to this old system - Ptolemaic - the movements of the stars are presumed to be extremely complicated. For instance, the planet Venus is supposed to follow an orbit of this sort. [On a blackboard he draws the epicyclical orbit of Venus according to the Ptolemaic conception.] But even accepting such complicated movements, we are still not able to calculate the positions of the stars correctly. We do not find them in the places where they apparently should be. And furthermore there are certain movements of the stars for which the Ptolemaic system has no explanation at all. Movements of this sort seem to me to be described by the little stars round the planet Jupiter, which I have recently discovered. Would the gentlemen care to begin with an observation of the satellites of Jupiter, the Medicean stars?
ANDREA: pointing to the stool in front of the telescope: Please sit here.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Thank you, my child. I fear that things are not quite as simple as all that. Signor Galilei, before we apply ourselves to your famous instrument we would like to have the pleasure of a disputation. The theme: Can such planets exist?
THE MATHEMATICIAN: A formal disputation.
GALILEO: I thought you could simply look through the telescope and convince yourselves.
ANDREA: Here, please.
THE MATHEMATICIAN: Of course, of course. - Naturally, you know that according to the ancients stars revolving about a centre, Other than the earth cannot exist, nor can there be stars which have no support in the Heavens?
GALILEO: Yes.
THE PHILOSOPHER: And quite apart from the possibility of such stars, which the mathematician [- he bows to the mathematician -] appears to doubt, I would, in all modesty, as a philosopher, like to pose the question: are such stars necessary? Aristotelis divini universum . . .
GALILEO: Should we not continue in the vernacular? My colleague, Signor Federzoni, does not understand Latin.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Is it of importance that he should understand us?
GALILEO: Yes.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Excuse me. I thought he was your lens-grinder.
ANDREA : Signor Federzoni is a lens-grinder and a scholar.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Thank you, my child. If Signor Federzoni insists . . .
GALILEO : I insist.
THE PHILOSOPHER : The argument will lose in elegance, but it is your house.-The cosmos of the divine Aristotle, with its mystical, music-making spheres and crystal domes and the gyrations of its heavenly bodies and the oblique angle of the sun’s orbit and the secrets of the satellite tables and the rich catalogue of constellations in the southern hemisphere and the inspired construction of the celestial globe, is a conception of such symmetry and beauty that we should do well to hesitate before disturbing that harmony.
GALILEO: How would it be if your Highness were now to observe these impossible as well as unnecessary stars through this telescope?
THE MATHEMATICIAN: One might be tempted to reply that your telescope, showing something which cannot exist, may not be a very reliable telescope, eh?
GALILEO: What do you mean?
THE MATHEMATICIAN : It would be much more helpful, Signor Galilei, if you were to tell us the reasons which lead you to the assumption that in the highest spheres of the immutable Heavens stars can move freely through space.
THE PHILOSOPHER: Reasons, Signor Galilei, reasons.
GALILEO: The reasons? - When a glance at the stars themselves and my own observations will demonstrate the phenomenon. Sir, the disputation is becoming absurd.
THE MATHEMATICIAN: If one could be sure that you would not excite yourself further, one might suggest that what is in your telescope and what is in the Heavens may be two different things.
THE PHILOSOPHER : That could not have been more courteously expressed.
FEDERZONI: You think we painted the Medicean stars on the lens!
GALILEO: Are you accusing me of fraud?
THE PHILOSOPHER: But how could we? In the presence of his Highness!
THE MATHEMATICIAN : Your instrument - whether one calls it your child or your pupil - is certainly most cleverly made, no doubt about that!
THE PHILOSOPHER : And we are entirely convinced, Signor Galilei, that neither you nor anyone else would dare to bestow the illustrious name of our ruling house on stars whose existence was not beyond all possible doubt. They all bow low to the Grand Duke.
COSIMO looks round to the court ladies: Is there something not right with my stars?
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
ant

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 5935
Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 12:04 pm
12
Has thanked: 1371 times
Been thanked: 969 times

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

Thanks for your response

There's much I can respond to here.
But in the spirit of fairness, I need to review the entire thread thoroughly before I proceed further.

A quick glance tells me that the majority of the people who responded I am in agreement with: it's highly unlikely the man Leonardo was would have resorted to these secretive coding tactics, and embed them in his art.

But that doesn't mean you're wrong.
I need to review all the so called "evidence" you've posted for us here.

The first pdf download no longer is accessible. Your video presentation is as well. Thanks for that.
If you can, please provide the pdf again.

I will be reading the google book link to Leonardo's manuscripts you provided.

I think largely you are wanting to see the zodiac in Leo's Last Supper the same way a religious zealot claims to see Jesus embedded in his slice of morning toast.

But I want to address what you claim to be evidence and avoid the silliness similar to what follows below.
More later.
Thanks

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... CNLFPldWa8
Last edited by ant on Wed Sep 24, 2014 5:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Interbane

1G - SILVER CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 7203
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2004 12:59 am
19
Location: Da U.P.
Has thanked: 1105 times
Been thanked: 2166 times
United States of America

Re: The Zodiac in Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper

Unread post

I think largely you are wanting to see the zodiac in Leo's Last Supper the same way a religious zealot claims to see Jesus embedded in his slice of morning toast.
Apophenia!

:clap:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
Post Reply

Return to “Religion & Philosophy”