Blogpost 8 : End of the World Hidden in Art

Everything around us is art. A person who does not appreciate art is lifeless, because we were all made out of art. “Your mother’s vulva is the canvas and your dad’s phallus is the paintbrush.” A quote from a movie I’ve watched last weekend entitled “This is the End” You might think of this quote inappropriate and I do too at first, but that’s the only way I can make you appreciate art which is by inclining it to your life. Moreover that’s the thing about art, you’ll never learn to appreciate it unless you begin to put yourself into it and learn to break it down to smaller pieces and decode each little portion.

 I’ve come across an article entitled “Da Vinci ‘predicted world would end in 4006’” by anonymous in Worldwide Religious News which talks about the painting of Leonardo Da Vinci of “The Last Supper”. Researchers try to decode and break down the smallest details of the painting to try to unravel the hidden messages depicting the end of the world.

Slavisa Pesci, an information technologist, created an interesting visual effect by overlaying a semitransparent, mirrored version of the painting on top of the original. The result is that two figures that look like Templar knights appear at both ends of the table, while someone who is possibly holding an infant stands to Jesus' left. “Sabrina Sforza Galitzia said the clues were to be found in da Vinci’s Last Supper mural. The central half-moon window, or lunette, above his painting of Christ with his disciples before the Crucifixion contains a “mathematical and astrological” puzzle which she has deciphered, she said. She claimed to have worked out that da Vinci foresaw the end of the world in a “universal flood” which would begin on March 21, 4006 and end on November 1 the same year. Documents showed that he believed that this would mark “a new start for humanity”, Ms Sforza Galitzia said.”

Art and its elements can be seen in things that we see everyday. In every object we see, in our nature and even when we simply write a poem for someone there is art. And it’s amazing how we can interpret such things from everything we see around us; of how we see different shapes or animals just by looking at the clouds in the sky, how we interpret what people really mean through their poems or letters, or simply just by the paintings that we see in museums like how Sabrina Galitzia interpreted Da Vinci’s painting of “The Last Supper”.

On the contrary, I doubt Sabrina Galitzia’s opinion about the end of the world in Da Vinci’s painting because there are many things that you can interpret from overlaying a semitransparent, mirrored version of the painting and there are even hundreds of explanations that were published talking about their interpretations about painting.

In my research I found an article entitled “Leonardo Da Vinci’s last Supper” from (http://www.tickitaly.com/galleries/davinci-last-supper.php) states that: “A large part of the blame lies with Leonardo da Vinci himself of course. Quixotically he chose to complete his masterpiece with oil paint (a far less reliable medium in Renaissance times than today) rather than with the fast-drying and stable watercolour fresco technique. Within five years the painting was crumbling. “ which resulted the masterpiece to produce different kinds of images when overlayed. 

But all in all, I believe that people are entitled to their own opinion. And we can never question anyone's interpretation of anything because each one of us has a different way of looking into the things that surrounds us, it is still up to us if we'll consider their interpretation as the truth.