THE NEW COMMANDMENT

Brotherly love is the place where Christ continues to make himself present,
the place where the relationship with him is lived.

B. Maggioni

Today the liturgy of the Word takes us back to the Cenacle, where Jesus gives his new commandment. We too enter into that solemn hour through a work by Tintoretto, The Last Supper (1592-1594). Son of Giovanni-Battista, a dyer of cloth, Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594), known precisely as Tintoretto, is defined by Vasari as «the most terrible brain that painting has ever had». Boschini judged him even more negatively, defining him as a “attempt at being a man”. But not everyone was hostile to him, since in 1556 he was accepted among the members of the Florentine Academy of Painting together with Palladio, Titian and Salviati. With a very lively temperament, Jacopo pursued, from the beginning of his activity, a very specific ideal: fame. His canvases soon became exemplary for his taste for colour and light and for the animation of the scenes, always crowded, with poses, twists, musculature that recall Michelangelo. During the 1550s, Tintoretto painted both mythological and religious scenes with great mastery and ease, taking up the suggestions of Paolo Veronese. In 1564 he began the decoration of the Scuola di San Rocco, the work that perhaps most characterized his artistic evolution. From the magniloquence of the scenes, he moved on to a more thoughtful and intense expressive research. In 1575 he was the protagonist in the redecoration of the Palazzo Ducale, culminating in the immense canvas of Paradise in the very important hall of the Maggior Consiglio. One of his last works is the aforementioned Last Supper in San Giorgio Maggiore (Ve). We can define it as the extreme sign of the development of the master’s enlightened research. There are two sources from which the light comes: the lamp placed high up, on the left, which illuminates the celestial spirits, and Christ, at the centre of the table, in the act of offering the bread of the Eucharistic supper. Between the two light sources the visual horizon of the entire composition expands. The figures all around are struck by great amazement and bewilderment. We also have the chasing of astonished glances, which seem to want to tell each other the event of which they are protagonists. The act of offering the bread is silent but will later be made explicit in the new commandment. Living the commandment is to bear witness to the presence of Christ among us, the act with which he restored dignity to every man.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey