“The Last Supper” is a painting from the Renaissance Era created by the artist Leonardo DaVinci. The painter includes many visual elements to help to contribute to the overall theme of the artwork. Some of the many visual elements included to help the viewer to understand the painting include the artist’s creative use of color scheme and the use of shape and space throughout DaVinci’s masterpiece. These visual elements are essential in aiding the viewer of the artwork to be able to understand the theme of the painting.

One of the first things in the painting the viewer’s eyes immediately go to would be Jesus, who is the center of the artwork. In the visual, Jesus is wearing bright red clothing. Not only is DaVinci’s choice of color for Jesus’ clothing to make him stand out from every other person in the picture, but also as a way of symbolizing the blood he had shed when he was crucified. Another thing the viewer can see is the table cloth is completely white to represent the purity of Jesus Christ and the idea that he has cleansed his believers from all sin. DaVinci seems to have used darker and more somber colors surrounding Jesus throughout the work, including the shadows he painted in the background and the clothing on the other people joining Jesus for supper at the table. The viewer can interpret that these depressing colors represent the foreshadowing of his death, which was soon to come after this supper. Another color used repeatedly throughout DaVinci’s masterpiece is the color blue, which is known to represent heaven in different literary works and can be interpreted as so in this painting. Behind Jesus, there is a window with a pretty landscape of rolling hills and a bright blue heavenly sky, which represents Jesus being a holy figure. DaVinci chose to use all these colors in this certain way to make the viewer feel and understand what is believed by people devoted to the Christian religion, which is that Jesus shed his own blood to cleanse everyone’s sins. 

DaVinci was able to utilize his creativity when deciding how to use the spacing and different shapes throughout his masterpiece. As the viewer may have noticed at a first glance when looking at DaVinci’s color scheme, there are windows behind Jesus looking out onto a beautiful landscape. The artist could have chosen to only paint one singular window behind Jesus in the artwork, but he intentionally chose to paint three. The three windows could symbolize multiple things. Firstly, they could represent the holy trinity; the father, the son, and the holy spirit. These are the three forms that Christians believe God takes as an omnipresent holy figure. The three windows could also symbolize Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross along with the two other crosses when he was being crucified, also another foreshadowing of his soon to come death in the painting. DaVinci was also clever when deciding on the spacing when painting each person in the artwork. As mentioned before, the viewer’s eyes go immediately to Jesus. This is not only because of the color red used by DaVinci, but it is also because Jesus is centralized. The other people around him at the table seem to all be crowded and standing quite close to each other while Jesus has plenty of space between his neighbors at the table on each side of him. The artist specifically painted everything in such a way so the viewer could notice Jesus and realize the theme, which is Jesus being the center of everything. He wanted the viewers to see Jesus in the same light that he did as a Christian.

DaVinci’s use of different colors as a part of his color scheme and the use of different spacing and shapes throughout his artwork, “The Last Supper”, are critical in order to help the viewers in understanding the true intended meaning behind the painting. As a Christian, DaVinci wants other people to see Jesus as he and other Christians do, which is his purpose for creating the painting in the first place. Without these subtle yet important visual elements DaVinci has included, the viewer may have never been able to understand the theme he is trying to portray.