When painting his masterpiece, The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci used the face of his enemy as the model for his portrait of Judas Iscariot, Jesus’ betrayer. It seemed the perfect image at the time. Da Vinci poured all of his anger into his painting of this man. Da Vinci began to conflate Judas with the person he’d grown to hate.
But afterward, when he needed to begin painting the face of Jesus, da Vinci got completely stuck. He just couldn’t do it, couldn’t capture the expression of love and compassion that was surely on the Lord’s face. The two conflicting emotions in his heart stopped his hand. Finally, the great artist repainted Judas completely, removing the resemblance to the man he had viewed as his adversary. As soon as he had done this, the inspiration for Christ’s face came easily.
How often have I painted my so-called enemies with the heaviest of brushes? How often have they become images of what I hate and fear, with all the humanity stripped from them?
This message is excerpted from “Painting the face of Jesus” by Elise Seyfried in the March/April 2022 Gather magazine.
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