Da Vinci and The Last Supper

Over at the Da Vinci Dialogue, Christian art historian Lisa DeBoer offers and interesting analysis of Da Vinci's painting of the last supper. This is probably the best essay posted yet at the site. Here's a snip.

If there is a code central to Leonardo’s Last Supper it would be numerological. Leonardo has arranged the apostles in his painting into four groups of three. There are also three windows in the back wall. Three (the number of the divine) and four (the number of the earth) are theologically symbolic numbers that add and multiply into two other theologically symbolic numbers: seven (days of the week, gifts of the spirit, joys and sorrows of the Virgin) and twelve (tribes of Israel, number of disciples, months of the year). Such a painting with its ideal perspective, its symbolic composition, and its emotional resonance would have afforded its audience, the monks of Santa Maria della Grazia, many opportunities for devotional contemplation.

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Da Vinci Dialogue, 10.03.06