Leonardo Da Vinci and The Last Supper.

Leonardo da Vinci, or so the story goes, painted The Last Supper with models. He found a beautiful young boy to use as the model for Jesus, he found models for all the disciples but he couldn't find one for Judas.

Many years passed, he found a man with all the marks of mean living on his face, greed, hate, vice, meanness in every line. He asked the man to be his model, the man accepted readily.

Only after Leonardo had finished The Last Supper did the man confess his secret, "Leonardo, don't you recognize me? It is I, the boy who modeled for your Jesus." Leonardo was stunned, but once he looked for the signs, they were there, beneath the wasted life, this was the same boy, aged by vice and meanness beyond what a few intervening years could account for.

None of the above is a true account and yet, this story stuck with me. In the mind's churning, some stories return to the surface with greater regularity. This is one of them.

A moral interpretation and a longer version of the story can be found here:
https://www.cjpwisdomandlife.com/davinci-last-supper-judas-jesus/

There are variations of the story but a casual internet search reveals none wich are older than the 20th century.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-supper/

[pasted from Snopes]

Claim:   The same person posed for the figures of both Judas and Jesus in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper.”

Status:   False.

Examples:   [Collected on the Internet, 1999]

A story is told that Leonardo da Vinci painted “The Lord’s Supper” when living in Milan. Before he could paint the thirteen figures, it was necessary to find men who could serve as models. Each model had to have a face that expressed da Vinci’s vision of the particular man he would represent. Needless to say, this proved to be a tedious task to find just the right face. One Sunday, as da Vinci was at the cathedral for mass, he saw a young man in the choir who looked like da Vinci’s idea of how Jesus must have looked. He had the features of love, tenderness, caring, innocence, compassion, and kindness. Arrangements were made for the young man, Pietri Bandinelli, to sit as the model for the Lord. Years went by, and the painting was still not complete. Da Vinci could not find just the right face for Judas. He was looking for a man whose face was streaked with despair, wickedness, greed and sin. Ten years after starting the picture, he found a man in prison whose face wore all the qualities of Judas for which he had been searching. Consent was given for the prisoner to pose, and he sat as the model for Judas. Leonardo worked feverishly for days. But as the work went on, he noticed certain changes taking place in the prisoner. His face seemed filled with tension, and his bloodshot eyes were filled with horror as he gaped at the likeness of himself painted on the canvas. One day, Leonardo sensed the man’s uneasiness so greatly that he stopped painting and asked, “What seems to trouble you so much?” The man buried his face in his hands and was convulsed with sobs. After a long time, he raised his head and inquired, “Don’t you remember me? Years ago I was your model for the Lord, Jesus.” This miserable man had turned his back on Christ and turned his life over to sin and the world sucked him down to its lowest levels of degradation. He no longer loved the things he had loved before. And those things that he at one time hated and despised, now he loved. Where once there was love, now there was misery and hate; where once there was hope, now there was despair; where once there was light, now there was darkness. When Leonardo da Vinci was painting his masterpiece, The Last Supper, he selected as the person to sit for the character of the Christ a young man, Pietri Bandinelli by name, connected with the Milan Cathedral as chorister. Years passed before the great picture was completed, and when one character only — that of Judas Iscariot — was wanting, the great painter noticed a man in the streets of Rome whom he selected as his model. With shoulders far bent toward the ground, having an expression of cold, hardened, evil, saturnine, the man seemed to afford the opportunities of a model terribly true to the artist’s conception of Judas. When in the studio, the profligate began to look around, as if recalling incidents of years gone by. Finally, he turned and with a look half-sad, yet one which told how hard it was to realize the change which had taken place, he said, “Maestro, I was in this studio twenty-five years ago. I, then, sat for Christ.”

Origins:   We know so little about the circumstances surrounding da Vinci’s creation of “The Last Supper” that an account offering this much detail is immediately suspect. Certainly da Vinci didn’t take twenty-five years, or even ten years, to complete his work, as claimed in these accounts. Documentary evidence indicates

he began “The Last Supper” in 1495 and was finished with it by 1498. (At the outside, Da Vinci would had to have completed his work by the end of 1499; that year he fled Milan ahead of the invading French and didn’t return to the city until 1506.) Other details presented here are woefully wrong as well: There are no records of whom Leonardo used as models for the figures in “The Last Supper,” but he was painting on a wall, undoubtedly from sketches, so in no case would he have had models sitting in a “studio” for “days” while he “painted on canvas.”

This tale is simply a Christian religious allegory warning of the inner spiritual decay (as exemplified by an outer physical decay) that awaits those who spurn Jesus Christ. As with many other examples of glurge, the writer has housed his message within a historical framework to lend it additional impact, thereby achieving exactly the opposite of what he intended: readers now focus on the literal truth of the allegory’s details rather than its message.

The prose version of this glurge bears a strong similarity to the following bit of verse (of unknown origin):

Two pictures hung on the dingy wall
Of a grand old Florentine hall —

One of a child of beauty rare,
With a cherub face and golden hair;
The lovely look of whose radiant eyes
Filled the soul with thoughts of Paradise.

The other was a visage vile
Marked with the lines of lust and guile,
A loathsome being, whose features fell
Brought to the soul weird thoughts of hell.

Side by side in their frames of gold,
Dingy and dusty and cracked and old,
This is the solemn tale they told:

A youthful painter found one day,
In the streets of Rome, a child at play,
And, moved by the beauty that it bore,
The heavenly look that its features wore,
On a canvas, radiant and grand,
He painted its face with a master hand.

Year after year on his wall it hung;
‘Twas ever joyful and always young —
Driving away all thoughts of gloom
While the painter toiled in his dingy room.

Like an angel of light it met his gaze,
Bringing him dreams of his boyhood days,
Filling his soul with a sense of praise.

His raven ringlets grew thin and gray,
His young ambition all passed away;
Yet he looked for years in many a place,
To find a contrast to that sweet face.

Through haunts of vice in the night he stayed
To find some ruin that crime had made.
At last in a prison cell he caught
A glimpse of the hideous fiend he sought.

On a canvas weird and wild but grand,
He painted the face with a master hand.

His task was done; ’twas a work sublime —
And angel of joy and a fiend of crime —
A lesson of life from the wrecks of time.

O Crime: with ruin thy road is strewn;
The brightest beauty the world has known
Thy power has wasted, till in the mind
No trace of its presence is left behind.

The loathsome wretch in the dungeon low,
With a face of a fiend and a look of woe,
Ruined by revels of crime and sin,
A pitiful wreck of what might have been,
Hated and shunned, and without a home,
Was the child that had played in the streets of Rome.

We also found a sighting of the tale (minus claims of the painting being da Vinci’s “Last Supper”) in a 1979 collection of tidbits and tales meant to be used in sermons:

A painter once wanted a picture of innocence. He found and painted a little child kneeling beside his mother at prayer. The palms of his hands were reverently folded, mild blue eyes upturned with an expression of devotion and peace. The painter prized this portrait of young Rupert above all else and hung it prominently in his study, calling it “Innocence.”

Years later when the artist was old, the portrait was still there. He had often thought of painting a counterpart — the picture of guilt. One day he purposely visited a neighboring prison. On the damp floor of the cell lay a wretched man, named Rupert, heavily ironed. His body was horribly wasted, his eyes hollow, vice sprouted all over his face. The old painter succeeded admirably, and the portraits hung side by side — “Innocence” and “Guilt.”

Last updated:   13 January 2008

Wordless Wednesday: Only Mum Can Judge Me

The King's Standard

At eleven in the evening, the King of the world decided to call a meeting. Everyone was ordered to come to the castle and wait on his majesty's pleasure. The governments of the world each sent a delegation of representatives including their top executives. Whether these happened to be prime ministers, presidents, dukes, or dictators did not matter, all were subservient to his majesty, naturally.

"I have an announcement," said the King of the World. His councillors and advisors had not been warned of this developement and were quietly discussing options with the Generals.
"I banish all months, fish and people with an S in their names from the country for ever."

The room might have erupted in roars of opposition but the King's own name began with the letter S and had several more sprinkled throughout like so many caraway seeds on a moist steamed bun.

"You bore me, you see," said the King with a tone of finality when everyone had been bracing themselves for another of his long winded speeches.

Then he could have leapt from the throne on which he had sat for so long and for which, in return, such little gratitude had been given and he could have run screaming or maniacally laughing from the throne room. Or, he could have produced a sword seemingly out of nowhere which he had cunningly concealed in his robes and slashed a chandelier rope and risen up out of the throne room to a waiting window like some swashbuckling hero of the silver screen's golden age.

"Just kidding," he said, "I've decided to declare War against our enemies neighbouring our southern border.

Everyone expelled a sigh of relief. The Generals put down their phones, the advisors sheathed their pens, the councillors returned emergency briefs to emergency briefcases.

Contentment reigned.

49 The Murder Book

Homicide Detective Ellison had been assigned to the cold cases as a sop. Close to retirement and having clocked 40 odd years in the force, it was just what he was looking for, the cases that wouldn't go away. The bad guys left in the cold.

Some were cases he himself had worked on 20 years ago. But eventally he came to the one that would prove his last.

"I'd leave that one alone, it's bad mojo," said his new-old partner, Detective Jacek (Jack) Tedesky, from a blue family of Polish extraction, his father and grandfather had been officers. He was retiring in a week, against his will but the government policy did not make exceptions. 67 and they forced you out. A shame really.

"What's up Tedesky? Never knew you to shy from a murder book," He was referring to the volumes of evidence and documentation that Homicide detectives used for keeping everything to do with each case organized.

"I never spent enough time with my kids, you know? Now they don't want to talk to me."
"Yeah, I get it, pass me that book will you?"
"I wish I had though, you know? I wanted to, but the cases kept coming and we needed the cash for Marjorie's treatments."
"Those damned co-pays."
"Those damned co-pays, exactly, you'd think serving and protecting putting your life on the line every day and night would net us some better dental coverage."
"We should go have a word with the roommate, she says in the statement here that she was visiting her parents but I got a receipt from a gas station in town with her name on it."
"Let's check out her story, I tell you, why did I do all those things I did, for my kids, if now they don't wanna talk to me?"
"Kids are funny Jack, You do your best or you don't, they forgive you or they don't."
"What's that supposed to mean, you saying I didn't do my best?"
"You think my kids talk to me?"
"You were on the phone with them this afternoon."
"Yeah but they only talk about the good stuff, come on Jack, we were old to this game when it was new, there ain't no human life that's all ups with no downs, I mean what kind of a ride is that? Sure ain't no rollercoaster I'll get on."
"Alright Frank," Jack said, he seemed to shrink in his chair, suddenly old, he'd be retired in a week, what was he going to do? All he knew about living was what he did and when he couldn't do that, what?"
"Still," said Frank.
"Yeah?"
"Let's do this book and then, let's get a fishing boat, or open a cafe or something, or maybe we do nothing but try and repair the damage to our relationships Jack, it's never too late until you're late and great."
"Thanks Frank, let's go check out her story, maybe swing past the gas station first, I'd like to ask them a few questions."
Frank locked up the murder book in his desk drawer.
"I want a burger first, you want a burger?"
"Do I want one or can I have one?"
"Man..."

Fictional world idea: Reality is a leaderboard

You are judged on a daily basis. Each night that you sleep you move up or down, you always wake up in a new world. very similar but the difference depends on your actions on that day and each and every day.

There is no judge. There is only judgement. This is a stochastic process like evolution. Time is an illusion. There is duration without progression. The illusion of progression is due to the judgement moving you up or down on the leaderboards of reality.

Every day is another chance to get it right.

Wronging: How to write copious odious quantities of words

Don't research. Don't have a plan, just pound those keys hard and fast and make a mess. Ramble, digress, avoid: index cards; any attempt at logical structure; leading topic sentences; authoritative sources; and great books by great writers.

Leave work undone. Start new work often. Keep no records, refuse to track your progress. Establish no milestones and be fixated monomaniacaly on goals. Pay no attention to process and clench your mind mightily. Wish for outcomes and do not do anything concrete to make them a reality. Use words of negation like punctuation. Make eloquent excuses, put the blame on everybody from your parents to your best friend's best friend. Tolerate no compromises, be unforgiving and angry and frustrated.

Hang on in unquiet desperation sitting in quiet cafes in the hours of the early afternoon once the office lunch crowd has gone back to work.

Make housecalls where you berate Prince[ess] Charming for not plucking you from this nightmare of your own creation.

"Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. Well, then it isn't one to you, since nothing is really good or bad in itself—it's all what a person thinks about it. And to me, Denmark is a prison."
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

What Shakespeare is explaining so beautifully is that our thinking is the root cause of our problems. Bad things happen to us sometimes, there is no changing that, what makes these bad things into a problem is when we decide we don't want to take responsibility for our lives anymore and want someone to comfort us and tell us it is going to be okay if we can just get back on our feet and make another attempt which would be well and fine if we then proceeded with the part where we get up and get on with it. Wanting comfort is human, wanting comfort to the exclusion of all else smacks of addiction.

In the context of writing or wronging, sometimes trying to imagine the worst way to write helps us to find the insight that lets us find the gaps in our process and tilt the balance of our write-ness and wrongness towards righteousness.

Hopefully.

Simple is not easy: two questions and two attitudes for writing anything

The two questions we need to ask ourselves when writing are simple enough. If you can answer them to your satisfaction you may have also done the same for your audience. No opinion exists in a vacuum.

The two attitudes we need to demonstrate in ourselves when writing are also simple enough however simple does not mean easy.

So what?
Who cares?

Vulnerability.
Receptivity.

Brake for Stan

Written October 28, 2002, four years before this blog began about avant garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

In the poem I try to convey an image from a documentary about the filmmaker that stuck with me. A clip of sunlight piercing the trees at sunset seen through the open rear window of a speeding car. Meanwhile, a friend of the filmmaker relates in voice over how Stan enjoyed 'mickey-mousing' in time, which in the context of the documentary had something to do with images that could jump from the future to the past and back again. From men in space to dinosaurs on earth.

According to sources, Mickey mousing has to do with the total synchronization of image and sound first highlighted in the animated short Steamboat Willie (1928). What Stan's friend meant exactly by his comment is tantalizingly just beyond my present comprehension.

In interviews, Brakhage often returns to the question of how the untrained eye must see the world in terms of unknown, hence uncategorized, experiences, how a simple lawn must radiate with colours before the eye learns to interpret all the variations as green. From other sources, once there is a schema, the eye often never sees the object again, which accounts for the inability of most people to identify defining details of their own national currencies. From Dan Norman, author of the Design of Everyday Things, we have the example of the american penny. Is Lincoln facing left or right? Where is the year of minting? Most are unsure when presented with a set of 16 alternatives and of those who are sure, not all get it right more than chance would predict.

I felt sad for Stan Brakhage, I can't articulate why.  I never watched the documentary again and my memories are corrupted reconstructions. But the poem exists.

That's enough backstory.

BRAKE FOR STAN.

Mickey Mousing in time;

to the future and

the primeval forests;

sunlight strobing

past us through

the curtain of trees;

masking gracefully

the veils, the holes,

the whole veil unto

which these souls

of mass and quantity

have willed themselves

projected.

If you do these things you will pass

The following story was told to me by a friend of mine who heard it from someone else.

Apparently, somewhere in this great land of ours is a place of work with a very special set of rules. If the rules are followed for the most part, then employment continues. However if there is no deviation, if there is in fact a slavish devotion to minutiae or its opposite, a major deviation from norms, then employment is rescinded.

Strangely enough, this business operates in a lucrative sector but the engagement of the employees is at an all time low, despite this, their managers do almost their best (see above) to give them almost all the support they can and just about nearly as often as more-than-chance succeed if only partially.

Liminality all the way up down left right backwards forwards in-between beside and around.

This company does not break or kill its members. Life will do that. This company bends its members. Distorts them until they resemble each other like so many camels in a caravan.