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Here’s my new take on The Last Supper, this time attempting to stay as faithful
as possible to Leonardo
Da Vinci’s original:
Hundreds of years of deterioration and poorly executed “restorations” have left
it uncertain exactly how the original once looked, so I ended up basing my
version most closely on an early 1800s life-size mosaic copy from the
Church of the Minorites
in Vienna:
Below is the current state of the Da Vinci original after its most recent modern
restoration in 1989:
I was prompted to take another go at The Last Supper this week when I was
interviewed about The Brick Testament by my
local paper. In addition to running several sample
images from the Brick Testament website, they also wanted to get a photo of me
posing with a MOC from The Brick Testament in hand.
My old version of
The Last Supper immediately came to mind, since it’s iconic, relatively
portable, and one of the few scenes from The Brick Testament that I’ve kept
intact over the years. But I’d just recently sold it as an artwork to someone
who had seen it at the art gallery in
Bratislava, Slovakia I was invited to last Spring.
So I began working on a new “replacement” Last Supper. But since this was going
to be a stand-alone piece, I did not feel constrained to have the scene
necessarily match the version in my
Last Supper story from The Brick Testament. That version was, of course,
inspired by Da Vinci’s version, but it was by no means an exact replica done
in LEGO. I decided to keep the face of Jesus the same as it appears in The
Brick Testament, but everything else I was willing to change to match the Da
Vinci version. This meant new faces and outfits for the disciples; tile floors
and a new table design; and perhaps the most noticeable change is the trapezoid
shape of the room to mimic the perspective of the Da Vinci version.
Here’s the photo as it appeared in
the
article:
I’m pretty happy with this new third version of The Last Supper. I still see
room for improvements, though. I still haven’t tried adding in a ceiling (which
would make it much harder to properly light the scene), and the perspective
still doesn’t truly match the original (maybe a different camera lens would
help?). And finally, though I did try to have the disciples match the poses of
the Da Vinci version, it’s pretty impossible to get their arms into positions
that match the original. Unless I resort to flex tubing and other trickery.
Hmmm...
Unfortunately, it’s my comparatively crude
first version that has achieved the most notoriety to date (being the version
seen in Time
magazine, on Wikipedia, and
passed around on many blogs and forums). But what can you do?
-The Rev. Brendan Powell Smith
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Beautiful as alway Brendan, but how did you acomplish the wall designs, they
look really interesting.
Scott
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In lugnet.announce.moc, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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on Wikipedia,
But what can you do?
-The Rev. Brendan Powell Smith
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Well, in the case of the Wikipedia- you can edit it.
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In lugnet.announce.moc, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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a photo of me posing with a MOC from The Brick Testament in hand.
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Dude, nice beard. We may have to start calling you Rabbi BPS instead....
:-)}
JOHN
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Scott Costello wrote:
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Beautiful as alway Brendan,
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Thanks, Scott.
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but how did you acomplish the wall designs, they
look really interesting.
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Even in my earlier two versions of The Last Supper, I had noticed those four
tall, dark rectangles along the side walls in Da Vinci’s original and sought to
create something like them even though I wasn’t sure what they were supposed to
be (four doorways on each wall? black rectangles painted on the walls for
aesthetic reasons?). It wasn’t until I happened to see the life-size mosaic
copy of The Last Supper in Vienna that I realized that these were likely
intended to be eight identical wall hangings (or at least that’s how they seemed
to the artist who made the copy in the early 1800s). Strangely they seem to be
slightly set back in the walls, so either the wall was carved especially for
these hangings, or maybe these are some sort of window coverings for the four
windows on each side wall. If they’re windows, though, it seems unlikely that
they are windows to the outdoors since you’d expect some light to leak through
around the edges.
For the portable version of the new Last Supper (seen in the newspaper photo), I
still went with black bricks flush against the rest of the wall. Simple and
sturdy. But when I brought it back home to try to get a more definitive photo
of the new Last Supper, I wanted to do a little more with those side walls. The
Vienna copy reveals what looks to be a pattern on the wall hangings. I wasn’t
sure how best to mimic that design, but what I came up with was rows of
alternating horizontal 1x1 plates in dark and light gray with a 1x1 tile at the
end so they fit snuggly into wall recesses. I also set them back half a stud
using jumper plates.
I wasn’t sure about which colors to use. The Vienna version seems to have a
little bit of a greenish tint in the wall hangings, so I thought about using
sand green and alternating that with dark or light gray. But I didn’t have
enough 1-by-X sand green plates around, so I used the two grays instead. I’m
pretty happy with the way it turned out.
-Brendan
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Timothy P. Smith wrote:
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In lugnet.announce.moc, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
Well, in the case of the Wikipedia- you can edit it.
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True, but it’s considered bad form to go and edit your own entries. :)
But Larry Pieniazek contacted me by e-mail about taking proper steps to license
the image in such a way that it can go on Wikipedia in good standing.
-Brendan
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In lugnet.build.ancient, John Neal wrote:
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Dude, nice beard. We may have to start calling you Rabbi BPS instead....
:-)}
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Too bad www.therabbi.com is already taken.
In the course of doing family genealogy research over the past couple of years,
my brother discovered that there’s a good chance he and I may be “technically
Jewish” through our maternal line.
Guess that would make me an uncircumcised Jew cum Christian apostate.
Wonder if that domain is taken!
But I’m not going to check.
-Brendan
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Hey Brendan,
Awesome recreation! I love the angled walls and the brick-built landscape.
Also a great job on selecting torsos, heads etc to match the painting. You
really should make a desktop wallpaper of this.
BTW, I know that I’ve let a whole bunch of BT updates go by. I’ve got a really
good excuse for being offline as of late. There’s this 7 week old little girl
who for some reason thinks it’s more important for her daddy to play with her
than for him to surf around on a computer :)
Bruce
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Hi, Bruce!
In lugnet.build.ancient, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
Thanks!
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You really should make a desktop wallpaper of this.
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OK! I just replaced the previous version of The Last Supper with the new
version on the Brick Testament
desktop wallpapers page. Enjoy!
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BTW, I know that I’ve let a whole bunch of BT updates go by. I’ve got a
really good excuse for being offline as of late.
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Yeah, I started to worry after the 3rd update with no response from Bruce, but I
was relieved when I saw that you’d continued to update you microscale blog. So
I figured it must just be that the most recent Brick Testament stories weren’t
good enough to merit comment. :)
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There’s this 7 week old little girl who for some reason
thinks it’s more important for her daddy to play with her
than for him to surf around on a computer :)
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But what does this little girl and her obsessive need for her father’s attention
have to do with you?
Ooooooohhhhh...
I get it.
Well, it happens to the best of us, I suppose
But not me.
I’m not sharing my LEGOs with anyone.
Good to hear from you, and congrats on reproducing.
-Brendan
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Nice work as usual, Brendan.
I don’t know how you made the torso of Jesus, but I think I would have preferred
a Futuron torso (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?M=sp015). It might
not be as accurate, but the Space Logo could have been a nice little joke - da
Vinci himself is rumored to have incorporated many jokes in his paintings. Arne,
Copenhagen
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