Leonardo’s Last Supper: Eel Meal the Real Deal?
By STAN PARCHIN
October 9, 2009
In the Winter 2008 issue of Gastronomica, John L. Varriano conjectures that the repast on the table of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (ca. 1495-98) includes eel and orange slices. The color-illustrated essay by Mount Holyoke College's Idella Plimpton Kendall Professor of Art describes in five pages certain foods depicted by the Italian Renaissance master (1452-1519) in his monumental Milanese masterpiece. Varriano proposes that Leonardo painted grilled eel garnished with orange slices, common in parts of Renaissance Italy, on the Eucharistic table of Jesus Christ and his apostles.
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| Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519). Last Supper (1495-98) (post-restoration). Tempera and oil on plaster. 460 x 880 cm (181.1 x 346.5 in.). Refectory, Monastery of Convento di Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. |
Last Supper: Creation and Restoration
Leonardo painted his Last Supper, commissioned by Milan’s Duke Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508), on the back wall of the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The combination of the inquisitive artist’s experimental painting techniques and the dining hall’s humidity greatly accelerated the fresco’s deterioration shortly after its completion. The oil and tempera on plaster work’s most recent restoration, completed in 1999, stemmed the mural’s degeneration and revealed the painting's true colors. Details of the table’s objects, previously obscured by accumulated layers of overpaint, lacquer and soot, were uncovered after the restorers’ extensive treatment.
Marine Cuisine
In At Supper with Leonardo, John Varriano contends that in the artist’s Last Supper, the meal in front of Christ and his disciples is not one of bread or Pascal lamb, but in fact a menu that included grilled eel with a garnish of orange slices. It was not uncommon for Renaissance artists to portray Biblical figures in 15th-century attire to make them more spiritually relevant to those who observed them. If Varriano’s thesis is correct, this style of artistic expression could apply to the presumed fish dish, a popular Renaissance meal in regions of the Italian peninsula, that rests on three serving plates that Leonardo painted on the table’s right-hand side.
Leonardo da Vinci is known to have composed at least one dozen grocery lists that included eel, bread and fruit. Perhaps what Dr. Varriano discerns as eel on Christ’s table in the artist’s Last Supper is a reflection of Leonardo’s own culinary preferences. According to one inventory, the prolific polymath possessed a copy of De honesta voluptate et valetudine or On Right Pleasure and Good Health (1470), a cookbook of sorts compiled by Bartolomeo Sacchi, called Platina (1421-1481). The author, a revered tutor of the Gonzaga of Mantua who was eventually appointed prefect of the Vatican Library by Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere (r. 1471-1484), included a number of recipes for anguilla (eel) in his text.
Toward a New Understanding of Leonardo’s Symbolism
Professor Varriano proposes that Leonardo’s presumed introduction of eel into the Last Supper was iconographically consonant with the Early Christian imagery of fish, a centuries-old symbol identified with the Savior. He notes that the snakelike creatures from the shores of Comacchio, near the Duchy of Ferrara, were popular with Renaissance Italians because once captured, they could survive for days without water and be preserved in brine before preparation for consumption. The author concludes that Leonardo forsook historical accuracy for contemporary realism in his mural, having substituted non-kosher eel for the traditional meal of lamb, bitter herbs and sweet haroset.
Once again, despite scientific restoration and intense study, Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has managed to elude precise interpretation by modern scholars of Italian Renaissance art and culture. If indeed Leonardo incorporated eel into his fresco, perhaps they were a subtle pictorial reference to Beatrice d’Este (1475-1497), the bride of Duke Ludovico Sforza (Leonardo’s ruthless Milanese patron) and a native of Ferrara, the region from where the serpentine fish was acquired for court consumption.
Sources
Cole, Alison. Virtue and Magnificence: Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1995, 112-114.
Pedretti, Carlo and Kenneth Clark. Leonardo: Studies for the Last Supper from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle (exh. cat.). Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1983.
Varriano, John, “At Supper with Leonardo”. Gastronomica (Vol. 8, No.1), Winter 2008, 75–79.