by Apr 10th, 2011 // Food, Holiday, Just for Fun, Themes

The Last Supper, but better tasting

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Leonardo Da Vinci, The Last Supper, 1495-1498

This month is a special time for a lot of people what with Passover and Easter celebrations to plan.  Leonardo Da Vinci’s incredibly famous painting The Last Supper is actually appropriate inspiration for both holidays as it marks the beginning of  the sacred time of Easter and depicts a Passover seder at the same time.

The painting is famous (and actually infamous) for a number of reasons: most simply, its beauty and the artist’s masterful genius that appears in everything he created; Da Vinci’s use of perspective, which was unparalleled at the time; the way in which he depicted the disciples with recognizable human emotion; and his experimental technique of painting on the wall without combining his tempera with wet plaster in true fresco style, but instead using a combination of paint materials applied directly to the wall.  Unfortunately the method he used was not permanent and much of the paint flaked off the wall.  It’s been under restoration most of its existence.  In addition, in the 1600s, some brave soul thought it was the perfect place for a door.  Really?

This painting is so beloved that many artists have copied in very unconventional ways.  Which gives us much material for crafting inspiration.  One woman recently recreated it in towel lint.  Interesting, but too much laundry required.  Another in sand…too much sweeping up.  But Vik Muniz’s version of The Last Supper is literally scrumptious.

Vik Muniz, The Last Supper, from the Pictures of Chocolate series, 1997

Muniz often appropriates other artists’ already famous artworks in his own work,  but recreates them with alternative materials such as caviar, dust, diamonds, strings and…oh, the  best part…chocolate (!), and then presents a photograph of the creation as his final artwork.  Muniz created an amazing rendering of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper in Bosco chocolate sauce.  Yum. He actually does a really beautiful job with his crazy materials and the detail in his Da Vinci homage is amazing.  Please go look at his website.  It will make you smile.  How could you not love art made of diamonds and caviar and chocolate.

So what is an art driven crafter to do?  I set up my kids at the table, poured chocolate syrup into a container, gave them long skinny popsicle sticks and paper and let them loose with the chocolate.

Needless to say, they loved it.  They really liked the painting part but liked the licking the stick part even better.  I guess we are lucky that they didn’t eat their artwork.  I love their abstract paintings and we can only hope to someday have the proficiency with chocolate sauce that Vik Muniz has.

Like Vik Muniz’s artwork, these might be best commemorated as a photograph because the syrup doesn’t really dry.  It’s about as successful a medium as the one Da Vinci chose in terms of longevity.

After we finished painting we had a chocolate syrup free for all and even broke out saltines to dip into our bowl.  One more tip: don’t do this right before bed–my kids were running around like banshees.

Now for the instructions…

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