Domenico Ghirlandaio’s first last supper emerges from 12 years of hibernation

After an extremely long restoration process, mainly due to economic problems and bureaucracy, the rarefied Last Supper painted by Domenico Ghirlandiao between 1476 and 1478 in the refectory of the ‘Badia di San Michele Arcangelo’ in Passignano is finally ready to be discovered, or rediscovered by the public.

 

From Florence city centre it only takes half an hour by car to reach the place, but once there you will certainly have no regret, especially with regards to the long queues of waiting visitors you would probably find at the doors of hot spots such as the Uffizi, or Santa Maria del Fiore. The Abbey is very well kept by the monks – who belong to the ancient ‘Congregazione Vallombrosana’ (founded in 1093) – and has a breathtaking pensile garden with a view on the Chianti’s vineyards. You don’t just pay a visit to a glorious work of art, but also to the context it was made for, and this is the very point here, thus an experience that no museum in the world can provide.

 

The restoration costed nearly half a million euro, and it took so long basically because of a lack of money due to the economic crisis started in 2008. It has been completed thanks to a donation of 200.000 euro made by ‘Friends of Florence‘, an American no profit foundation dedicated to the preservation of cultural and artistic heritage in Tuscany that this time could also count on the generous support of one Marquees Piero Antinori.

 

The frescos has been cleaned from the dirt accumulated in its more than 500 years of life and also from the corrections made to the picture at the end of the XIX century by Count Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki, a distinguished Polish noble and art collector who bought the property of the Abbey after 1866 and turned the refectory into a semi-fake Renaissance boardroom. But the Italian authorities wisely decided to recover the original version of the frescos, and to re-paint its missed parts.

 

As noticed by art historian Claudio Paolini, who advised the restorers, some strange objects placed by Ghirlandaio over the scene’s painted frame as symbols of his profession – a compass, a plumb, and a glass with a brush inside -, had been removed by Count Dzieduszycki, perhaps because they could represent Masonic symbols at his time.

 

This might be quite likely indeed if considering the old tradition that secret societies have played in this area (a personality such as Licio Gelli, who passed away a few days ago, was in fact born in Pistoia, not far from here). Moreover, the real protagonist of this picture is Judas, that is the only Apostle sitting on the side of the dining table toward the viewer and in fact prevents him to fully see Jesus Christ and the Apostle on his left side. As Paolini points out, this was a quite common pattern at that time, as proved, for instance, by the last supper painted by Andrea del Castagno’s for the refectory of the convent of Sant’Apollonia between 1445 and 1550. But if linked to the cruel scenes painted on the lunettes just a few years before Ghirlandaio’s fercos by Bernardo Rosselli – Cain murdering Abel and God expelling Adam and Eve from the Eden – this could be regarded by the fervent catholic family of the Count as a quite intimidating message.

 

The restoration has brought also to light the similarity between the decoration painted by Ghirlandaio to frame the scene, and that of the marble door of the castle. Along with some of the glasses painted on the dining table, which perfectly reflect the three windows in the room, this detail proves once again the attention the artist always paid to the relation between art and architecture, thus that between the image and its context. In this regards please see also the last supper Ghirlandaio painted for the ‘Cenacolo di Ognissanti‘ in Florence (1480), and that for Church of San Marco (1486, also in Florence), which are probably better preserved and more complex works of art, but with a total different taste from this early experimental work.

November 25, 2020