Investigation of Da Vinci's the Last Supper Inspiration Origin on Canonical Gospels

The Last Supper, as a great work of art in religious scope and in the world, is one of the main scales for most of the artists who worked after Da Vinci; as if many great painters have tried to paint their works with the theme of the last supper based on Da Vinci’s work. Here a question raises whether Leonardo Da Vinci was successful in creation of this great painting that is whether he could paint these great event based on Holy Bible successfully. Obviously, this event was described in Bible based on four narratives told by four gospel writers. Accordingly, Da Vinci should paint his Last Supper based on one or a combination of these four narratives. Although Leonardo Da Vinci tried to paint the apostles’ total reaction based on the content of Bible in the climax of the story, he painted their facial expressions and details of their reactions based on the totality of their characters depicted throughout Bible. Thus, this part of the painting seems to be based on Vinci’s extraordinary imagination. Many of art historians have different opinions about the origin of the Last Supper inspiration. Some of them have not mentioned or referred to its origin while others have investigated the origin of the Last Supper inspiration and told their opinion about it. Some art historians believe that Matthew’s narrative was da Vinci’s source of inspiration while others believe he combined the four narratives and painted a combination of the narratives on the mural based on his imagination; so that, from each narrative some signs can be found in the mural. In this article, it has been tried to find out whether Leonardo Da Vinci was successful in painting this great event. In so doing, the art work would be analyzed through both its artistic style and scrutinized review of all four narratives of the Holy Bible. First, It would be tried to assess the details of the painting and the da Vinci’s style in painting this mural and scrutinize the four narratives. Then the details would be matched with the four narratives to find out based on which narrative the mural was pained or whether it was pained based on a combination of all narratives. According to the analysis, it was found that Gospel of John was da Vinci’s source of inspiration in painting the Last Supper. This is based on five reasons: First is in the mural, there is no sign of performing Eucharist by Jesus and this has only been mentioned in John’s narrative. Second is the seating arrangement of the Apostles is exactly based on what John narrated in his Gospel. Third is John’s head turning to the Saint Peter has only been mentioned in John’s narrative. Fourth reason is in the mural, it is clear that Saint Peter is whispering in John’s ear and this is also among the points that has only been mentioned in John’s narrative and the last one is the details of Jesus and Apostles’ reactions have only been mentioned in John’s narrative. Based on these reasons it can be concluded that Saint John’s narrative was Leonardo Da Vinci’s source of inspiration in painting the Last Supper. But Da Vinci’s imagination and ingenuity in creating faces and reactions should not be ignored.