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Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 2.2 (2002) 147-162



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Essay

By the Numbers:
Material Spirituality and the Last Supper

Thomas Ryan and Lawrence Rubin

[Figures]

Painted in the late fifteenth century on the refectory wall of the Milanese Dominican friary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper needed restoration even during the lifetime of its artist. A mid sixteenth-century writer stated that it was in such poor "condition that there is nothing to be seen but a mass of confusion." 1 Early on, a door was cut into it so that its lower central portion was destroyed. Under Napoleon, the refectory was turned into a stable, and during World War II, the Last Supper barely survived the Allied bombing of Milan—all this apart from Milan's heat and humidity, nature's fresco-ravaging forces. This legacy of restoration and modification has continued as the latest, twenty-year (and not uncontroversial) effort was concluded in May, 1999.

There have been other Last Suppers, both before and after Leonardo's. Earlier representations appeared on the walls of Roman catacombs, and contemporary artist Andy Warhol quoted da Vinci freely in his versions of the Last Supper. 2 However, the number of imitators of Leonardo's masterpiece has been immense; a visit to any bookstore, art show, collectibles fair, or internet auction site reveals just how ubiquitous it has become. It is as if the condition of the original has called forth reproductions intended to compensate for its deterioration. In addition to the number of reproductions, the different media in which it has been reproduced and the variations on the theme of Leonardo's Last Supper abound. Christ and his disciples have been airbrushed onto stone, etched into glass, molded into aluminum, fashioned from matchsticks, glazed onto ceramic thimbles, floated in water on the tips of pens and caricatured on children's cereal boxes. The questions arise, What is the attraction and function of these myriad reproductions of Leonardo's Last Supper? Besides the obvious economic value to their manufacturers, what benefits accrue to those who produce, collect and display reproductions of this timeless image?

The majority of these reproductions have come from trained artists and craftspeople. The artistically untrained were relegated to the role of consumer or collector until the appearance of da Vinci's immortal image in the wildly popular hobby that originated in the 1950's, painting-by-numbers. 3 According to the vice president of the Craft House Corporation, the primary manufacturer of paint-by-number (pbn) kits, "religious images, [including Christ in the Garden and the [End Page 147] Madonna and Child] have been the mainstay of the pbn industry, and, of these, the Last Supper has been the most popular over the last fifty years." 4 Its popularity is reflected in a recent Smithsonian exhibition, "Paint by Number: Accounting for Taste in the 1950's," that featured the Last Supper prominently; it was the only religious piece in the show. 5 So, children, adults and families continue to line the walls of their offices, homes and institutions with their various "do-it-yourself Rembrandts." 6 All they need to do is carefully dab numbered acrylics or oils onto pre-numbered sections of pre-designed pictures, such as the Last Supper. If they can keep a steady focus (and hand), persevere, and follow the numbers, meditating as it were, the image of Christ emerges. In this way, the pbn medium and the Last Supper image, as disparate as they are, have grown together in American culture.

This essay examines a familiar artifact of popular culture, Last Supper reproductions, particularly in their paint-by-number format. We begin by presenting a range of views of popular (religious) art in general. We then report on a survey of creators and collectors of Last Supper pbns; the survey uncovered the spiritual significance of these objects and suggested the notion of "material spirituality" to account for it. In the course of the project, we encountered the long-standing, high...

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