Head Study 1
34cm x 24.5cm
soft pastel, charcoal, gouache and shellac on paper
2011
Head Study 2
34cm x 24.5cm
soft pastel, charcoal, gouache and acrylic on paper
2011
As soon as I saw a reproduction of this Last Supper painting my eyes were drawn to the figure on the far left. He seemed to be painted with an engaging naturalism and was looking directly out of the painting. This indicated to me that the young man may be the artist who painted the picture. Raphael famously and controversially did a similar thing in his major work The School of Athens that is housed in the Vatican. He includes himself in a crowd of ancient philosophers in a grand composition. His outward gaze is similar and correspondingly it has the effect of separating him from the action, but the eye contact has a magnetic effect on the viewer and you are automatically drawn towards him. Likewise, Hans Baldung Grien looks out from a throng of soldiers and grieving figures below one of the crucified thieves in his painting of Calvary, which makes up one of the panels of the Freiburg Altarpiece. Mischievously, he also shows up next to the perforated St Sebastian in his martyrdom painting that now hangs in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. These are just a few examples - there are many others in Western Art.
More recently and in the same tradition Alfred Hitchcock also liked to make cheeky appearances in his own films.
Having identified the element of Sansoni’s Last Supper that I found most intriguing, and only working from photocopies from a catalogue, the task I set myself was how to bring my images to life through transcription. A week before I started on the project I had been to Hampton Court to see the Triumphs of Caesar by Mantegna. I was particularly taken by the large areas of flat red on some of the panels and amazed at how modern they looked. This revelation was the starting point for my first drawing. By the time I had embarked on the second one I was more familiar with the portrait and was feeling more playful: I took more liberties and the head became more Pan-like. I can see possibilities for making many more versions and these two will lead to a bigger series.
