Wow ant, you just get stupider. Are you really saying that people should ignore the basic scientific facts in the video made by Max on the basis of credentialism? And you call me desperate? Keep digging that hole.

Your use of this ad hominem argument style is a great exercise in fallacious reasoning. You have exposed your own ignorant bigoted motives by describing the constellation shapes as "graffiti". That exhibits a complete failure on your part to see the natural grandeur of the cosmos, something Leonardo was especially alive to.

ant wrote:This type of atheist hooliganism toward art is deplorable.
I'm shocked that you've spent so much energy making this stuff up.

This doesn't add anything ant. Stop trolling.

I have made an important new discovery with world historical significance

I watched the video where the constellations are overlayed and stretched. In each case, is the anchor point the center of the face, or the center of a hand? Something that has a pattern of intention? I saw one that was simply the shape of the hand, which is a deviation from the mold.

Here are Leonardo's words taken from "Treatise on Painting" - a work published by one of his former pupils after Leonardo's death:

The most important things that can be found in the analysis of painting are the movements appropriate to the states of mind of each living creature, such as desire, contempt, anger, pity, and the like

The Last Supper is the epitome of what Leonardo has expressed in his notations.
It immediately proclaims a theme of betrayal. Each character reacts in posture, hand gesture, and facial expression to Christ's announcement that one them will betray him. Their movements are a deliberate exemplification of what Leonardo feels is most important in narrative portraiture.

Leonardo in his notes urges the painter to understand these things before dwelling on beauty:

Therefore, painter, compose parts of your figures arbitrarily, then attend fist to the movements representative of the mental attitudes of the creatures composing your narrative painting, rather than to the beauty and goodness of the parts of their bodies

Leonardo was commissioned specifically to paint one of the most popular historical narratives of the time for the Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.
There is no evidence either in writing or prior sketch work that is cause for belief that Leonardo at any time surreptitiously added symbolism of any kind to his humanistic portrays of characters in religiously themed portraits.

A broad religious social milieu of the time is not evidence to pin one man, particularly of the intellectual stature of Leonardo, to a particular philosophical commitment. The Last Supper commission was very clear and straightforward.

Richard Turner, in his book Inventing Leonardo states the following:

The scene is a conversation of hands, as if Leonardo unconsciously or otherwise were aware of the ancient rhetorician Quintilain's reflections on the potency of speaking hands

Each character gives voice to the narrative and communicates to an observer what is transpiring at the Last Supper: They have been told by Christ that one of them will betray him. Each apostle reacts emotionally and true to his character as described in the Bible.

Leonardo (below) aptly expresses what a narrative painting ought to accomplish:

The elements of narrative paintings ought to move those who look at or contemplate them in the same way as he who the narrative painting represents.

Yes - it's really that simple.

We can see, as evidenced by Leonardo himself, that he was true to his own words regarding capturing psychological/emotive presence of a character within a specific narrative. Extraneous speculation dirties an artist's sole purpose of capturing a human moment in time. It sullies what the artist's eye and mind wish to share openly with an observer. Clarity is his objective, not some form of foolish, covert symbolism.

You simply either do not understand this, or are willfully casting aside what is obvious and elegant to advance a kooky act of subterfuge by a genius you obviously have no real honest interest in.

There is genius, and then there is genius, AND THEN THERE IS LEONARDO.
So, you've got a mega genius all figured out, eh, Robert?


Do you have anything else to present here that advances your argument besides a youtube video and the support of someone named "Max May"?

This doesn't add anything ant. Stop trolling.

Just what I was hoping for, our fair and impartial moderator to step in!

NICE!!

Thanks so much, Interbane!

By the way..,

I bet if I added points on all orthogonal lines on the Last Supper I could add new celestial bodies that would contradict your, uh, "findings" and or find the infamous "flying spaghetti monster" ascending over the the apostles heads, taking flight in an easterly direction.

Interbane wrote:I watched the video where the constellations are overlayed and stretched. In each case, is the anchor point the center of the face, or the center of a hand? Something that has a pattern of intention? I saw one that was simply the shape of the hand, which is a deviation from the mold.

Thanks Interbane. The Last Supper aims to connect the deepest realities of human life. In terms of Christianity, the story says the deepest reality is that when a man, Jesus Christ, showed the world how to connect time with eternity, the response was betrayal and execution. The painting is set at the dramatic moment of betrayal, with Judas holding his bag of money and appearing surprised at the statement by Christ that one of the twelve will betray him.

In astronomy, the deepest reality affecting human life, and especially from the limited visual perspective available in Leonardo’s day before the telescope, is the annual cycle of the seasons. The painting uses the very old and widespread Christian motif of saying that the story of Jesus Christ reflects the annual cycle of the seasons, seen in the path of the sun through the stars.

Your question is then how Leonardo did this technically, using stars for body shapes. It is not a matter of using hands or face as anchor points. Rather, Leonardo first looked at the sky, drew the shape of the solar stars of each month using the precise natural accuracy for which he was rightly famous, and then embedded that natural observation in its sequential place in the painting.

His objectives were to use this traditional matching of apostles and months (as seen at Chartres Cathedral, Amiens Cathedral, St Denis Cathedral, etc etc) as the lightly concealed structural framework upon which the dramatic story of betrayal could be built. So there is not a simple anchor rule.

From right to left, the star path of the sun is seen as follows in the depiction of the twelve apostles of the Last Supper. Note that the video provides the star groups in reverse (from left to right starting with Pisces). The list below uses the star groups from right to left in correct order of time, beginning with Aries and going through the course of the year.

1. Hands and forearms
2. Hands (but small error in video where Max did not recognise the left hand is modelled on the Pleiades)
3. Arms and hands (possibly also head)
4. Head, body and arms
5. Hands and arms
6. Hand
7. Head, body and arms
8. Hand, head, body, arm, hand, dagger
9. Head and arms
10. Head and hands
11. Head, body and arms
12. Shoulder brooch, arms and hands

And Jesus Christ as the central focus of the painting is modelled on the stars of the constellation Pisces, marking the position where the spring equinox precessed in 21 AD, with head, arms and hands. Leonardo also used this same stellar framework of the two fishes for his depiction of Christ in his painting of the Baptism of Christ.

You have asked, Interbane, if the use of the hand of Doubting Thomas is an anomaly in the overall pattern. As the list above reflects, the stars of each constellation are unique in apparent shape, and each is very different and distinct. Only six of the twelve include the head of the figure in the depiction of the star group, while in the other six the stars are just used for hands and/or arms.

Thomas is pointing his index finger straight up at the zenith of the sky, in a traditional philosophical symbol of heaven, used by other painters such as Raphael in his School of Athens completed soon after The Last Supper. Raphael has Plato pointing up to symbolise universal eternity and Aristotle pointing down to symbolise particular time. A quite interesting recent comparative discussion is at http://www.advocateenterprise.org/leonardo.html

Now, the fact is that the main star group of Virgo, the sixth constellation, is similar in shape to a pointing hand. None of the other constellations form this shape. For Leonardo, with his intense anatomical interests, this presents a basic opportunity to use the hand shape, and also to encode the basic message of the painting.

The message is that the pointing finger invites the viewer to actually look up at the cosmos, to see the grandeur of the natural universe revealed in the visible shape of the stars of the night sky, and to reflect on how the story of Christ incarnates in human form the real and constant eternal pattern of nature formed by the path of the sun through the stars.

The message is that the pointing finger invites the viewer to actually look up at the cosmos, to see the grandeur of the natural universe revealed 

Its also the finger that "the doubting Thomas" inspected Christ's wound with after his resurrection, which is consistent with what Thomas is primarily known for and adds to the narrative.

But lets ignore this of course because the simplest explanation is not the best here!

ant wrote: Its also the finger that "the doubting Thomas" inspected Christ's wound with after his resurrection, which is consistent with what Thomas is primarily known for and adds to the narrative.

Good point, except that ignores the fact the finger is pointing to heaven and stuffs the science into the ignorant shape of traditional blind faith.

ant wrote: But lets ignore this of course because the simplest explanation is not the best here!

Thick. The finger in the wound is not the simplest explanation for how Leonardo constructed this painting to link time and eternity, but the finger pointing to heaven manifestly and simply explains this intent.

Perhaps that theme of pointing to a scientific heaven is also why Raphael used Leonardo as his model for Plato.

Perhaps that theme of pointing to a scientific heaven is also why Raphael used Leonardo as his model for Plato.

This too proves you are ill informed about Leonardo's life and popular lore that has been in circulation but is not established fact.

The red- chalk drawing of a bearded man at Turin is almost always identified as Leonardo da Vinci.
It has been described as a portrait "almost too good to be true" of the great master himself.
The drawing was discovered in the 1840s, in Italy, well after Leonardo had died.

It has not been able to be established with any certainty if this is a likeness of Leonardo.
The closest possible likeness of Leonardo closer to his life time are the famous woodcut that heads the chapter on Leonardo in Vasari's "Lives of the Most Eminent Painters"
But those portraits are profiles and limit any direct facial identification.

The Athens drawing of Plato that bears a resemblance to the unidentified portrait of Turin is assumed to be Leonardo because the Turin drawing is a portrait that has only been fancied as being that of Leonardo. There is no evidence that it is.

Richard Turner comments on this in his aforementioned book:

"To chose one identification over another is to choose one story as preferable to another. In our hearts we know what we want the answer to be: somehow our idea of Leonardo is diminished if this old man is in fact not Leonardo. But in truth it may not be Leonardo in which case the iconic center of our received image of Leonardo does not hold and we are compelled to tell a different sort of story"

In your heart its him, Robert.
But whats in your heart is not evidence enough.

Raphael was "thought to have drawn the likeness" of Leonardo but there is no verifiable likeness of Leonardo to establish with any certainty or near certainty, as I have stated above.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens