A Very Neglected Masterpiece

Many years ago, as a student visiting Florence for the second or third time, I was walking along a street, which I thought I knew quite well, when suddenly I noticed two large doors surmounted by old inscription,  ‘Il Cenacolo di Fuligno’. To the left of the door was a bell and an equally ancient marble plaque inscribed with the words ‘Custode di Cenacolo’. Although I had no idea what the word ’cenacolo’ meant, I did knew that a custode was a guard. With the impulsive fearlessness of youth, I soon found myself ringing the bell.  Experience had taught me that in Italy many a treasure lay concealed behind closed doors. Moments later a man appeared, but his blank and unsmiling face made me fear the worst. I blurted out in my best Italian that I would like to see the cenacolo.

To my surprise, I was ushered into what appeared to be his hall and from there into a vestibule where I was requested to sign the guest book. He then led me to a large room, whose end wall was decorated with a five hundred year old fresco. (The custodian stood at the back of the room the whole time I was there, a practice he has observed on every single visit I have since made!). The fresco was an image of The Last Supper and such was my introduction to a very Florentine tradition and also to a new word. The Last Supper is known locally in the city as il cenacolo rather than l’ultima cena. The word started life simply as a description of a room in which a shared meal was eaten. In time it came to denote the most famous meal in history.

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The Last Supper of Foligno by Perugino: Via Faenza, 42. Opening times: Tues, Thurs & Fri 9-12.

I could see, even at a distance, the hand of Perugino, but at the time the fresco was ascribed to a mere pupil of the great Umbrian master. Today, it is firmly back in the camp of the artist’s own works. The fresco is a good, but not a great painting. And yet I shall always be indebted to it, for it led me to a painting, which is indeed a masterpiece and one of the most neglected in the whole of Florence.

While trying to find out more about the ‘Cenacolo di Fuligno’, I discovered that Florence is home to numerous frescoes of the Last Supper, all of which decorate rooms once used by the city’s monks and nuns as their refectories. In time, many of the monasteries and convents were closed down and their buildings acquired by the state. This often makes access difficult, if not impossible, but some refectories have been turned into small museums and are open, albeit infrequently, to the general public.

One of the most famous paintings in the world happens to be a depiction of the Last Supper. It, too, was painted by a Florentine, but Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic image is to be found hundreds of miles away to the north, in the city of Milan. By the time Leonardo came to paint his fresco of the Last Supper, at the end of the 15th century, there was a tradition of such depictions in Florence dating back one hundred and fifty years.

The Last Supper of S.Croce by Taddeo Gaddi. Museo dell'Opera di S.Croce. Opening times: Mon-Sat 9.30-17.30 & Sun 13.00-17.30.

The earliest surviving fresco dates back to the middle of the 14th century and dominates the end wall of the refectory of Santa Croce. It was painted by Taddeo Gaddi, a pupil of the great Giotto. Given the horizontal format of the Last Supper, there is inevitably a lot of wall left to paint and artists would come up with a variety of solutions to this problem.  The most common was to add an image of the Crucifixion, an event which, after all, is foreshadowed in the Last Supper and an image which also has a good vertical format. This is what we see in Santa Croce, although Gaddi turns his Crucifixion into a tree of life, adding, on either side, scenes from the Life of St Francis.

A few years later, in 1367, Andrea Orcagna frescoed the huge end wall of the refectory of Santo Spirito with an image of the Last Supper surmounted by that of the Crucifixion. In the second half of the 19th century, in an act of cultural vandalism, which is now impossible to comprehend, the ex refectory was used as a depot for the city’s trams and most of the fresco of the Last Supper was destroyed when creating the entrance. The city’s Tourist Information Office still includes Santo Spirito on its promotional list of cenacoli, even though all that remains of the original fresco are the heads of two solitary apostles!

The Last Supper of S.Apollonia, Via XXVII Aprile. Opening times: Tues-Sun: 8.15-13.50.

Almost a century later, the nuns of Sant’ Apollonia commissioned Andrea del Castagno to paint not only the Last Supper, but also the Crucifixion flanked by an Entombment and a Resurrection. While the latter three images have suffered badly from the ravages of time, the Last Supper remains in pristine condition. The young Leonardo da Vinci arrived in Florence shortly after Castagno had finished his commission, but neither he nor anyone else would have seen the frescoes, either then or for the next 350 years, as the sisters of Sant’ Apollonia lived in strict clausura.

Last Supper of Ognissanti, Borgo Ognissanti, 42. Opening times: Mon, Tues & Sat 9-12.

But a fresco which Leonardo would have seen, and one which is credited as having a seminal influence on his own work, was painted in 1480 by Domenico Ghirlandaio, an artist not much older than Leonardo himself. Ghirlandaio painted three frescoes of the Last Supper, but the one he painted for the Benedictine monks is the most splendid. What may have impressed Leonardo was the way Ghirlandaio plays with real and fictive architectural motifs, making it difficult for the viewer to work out which is which. The room in which the Last Supper takes place seems to be an actual extension of the refectory itself. Ghirlandaio dispensed with additional stories, filling the space above with a variety of plants and flowers each redolent with symbolic references.

The Last Supper of S.Salvi, via San Salvi 16. Opening times: 08.15-13.50

But the real jewel in the crown lies a short bus ride (number 6) from the city centre, in San Salvi.

It was painted at the end of the 1520s by Andrea del Sarto and, after Leonardo‘s, it is considered to be the greatest depiction of the Last Supper in the world. (It is, in my opinion, much the greater work).

Although Leonardo transported to Milan a Florentine tradition, it was one he would challenge in a number of ways. One of these was to place Judas on the same side of the table as Christ and the other Apostles.

In this respect, Andrea del Sarto follows Leonardo’s example; he also follows Leonardo in painting the apostles without haloes. But there the resemblance to either Leonardo’s or other depictions ends. There are no colourful details a la Ghirlandaio, no subsidiary scenes. Apart from Christ and the apostles, we see only two other figures looking on from a balcony at the scene below. They were once, erroneously, thought to be the painter and his wife. Stripping away all incidental detail, Andrea focuses on the Apostles’ reaction to Christ’s declaration: ‘Verily I say unto you that one of you shall betray me’. The news ripples from the centre to the ends of the table. Three of the disciples get to their feet in protest, others look away.

In terms of drawing, colouring, composition or a sense of drama, Andrea’s fresco is hard to fault. As such, it deserves to be as well known as any work by Leonardo, Raphael or Michelangelo.