About two decades before the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci started
working on a pretty important and commonly depicted scene of christian mythology:
The Adoration of the Magi, or the moment, after the birth of Christ,
when three wise men, or kings, visited Jesus to offer him gifts.
Leonardo’s version of this story is strikingly different from the ones
we’re used to seeing. Not only because Leonardo added more action, both in the
foreground and in the background, but also because it’s unfinished.
This scene was commissioned by Augustinian monks in Florence but,
shortly after starting it, Leonardo left for Milan.
The work he left behind shows Mary and her son Jesus receiving a gift from one
of the three kings in front of an excited crowd. In the background,
a war broke out. You see a temple in ruin, with some people fighting in it.
This could symbolize the fight between good and evil, or between christians and pagans.
However, it’s the fact that this painting remained unfinished which makes this painting so appealing
to me, which adds to its mystery. The subject matter is not at all revolutionary, but the
fact that it’s unfinished allows us to appreciate the painting in a different way. The foreground
prefigures his later work The Last Supper, with subjects expressively acting different emotions.
However, unlike in The Last Supper, these subjects have an eerie feeling to them. Some are ghostlike,
blending in with the panel they’re painted on, some are skeleton-like, as if they had
lost their flesh. Most of them don’t even have eyes, their sockets being dark soulless pits.
It’s known that Leonardo was a scientist, closely and fanatically studying anatomy,
and it seems here that, to paint human faces, he first sketched their skulls.
Perhaps, he was to add their eyes, their flesh, their colour later.
I could go on about the painting’s composition,
the different possible meanings of the tree, the possible self-portrait Leonardo included,
or the various interpretations of the temple in the background. However, if I make that video,
I don’t think we’ll get much out of it, nothing much important anyways.
Instead, I offer you something different. I want to look at this work, not as it is
or as it appears, but as it was used in Tarkovsky’s last movie The Sacrifice.
Perhaps, by looking at it this way, we’ll learn something more valuable.
This video is made possible by the generous support of viewers like you. I cannot
overstate the importance of my patrons, which is why I thank every single one of
them who give a dollar or more per month in the credits at the end of each of my videos.
Check out patreon.com/thecanvas if you want to contribute to the production of these videos.
I’ve never been a religious person. At least not since I was a kid. And I’m not really looking for
anything spiritually… I have a craving sure, but I think that’s universal. Our need for spiritual
fulfillment is undeniable, it’s baked into us as a species. Some would say that it’s evidence
for God. I think it’s evidence that we created gods out of necessity, an existential necessity.
But I don’t believe in Gods, in souls or spirits. Modern pragmatism robs that from me. I’ll never
know what it feels like to feel connected to the mystical, to have a relationship with it. I might
be missing out from an essential part of the human experience. We’re increasingly heading, as a
civilization, into a world without this spiritual connection. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky
saw that and bemoaned it (he was an orthodox christian). His movies, almost always, explicitly
deal with faith and spirituality. However, they’re not the christian movies you may think about,
with the heavy moralizing and preaching. Instead, Tarkovsky exploits people’s need for faith and
spirituality, and give the viewer, who may not even believe, the feeling of believing. In other
words, watching Tarkovsky can be as close as a non-believer can get to experiencing spirituality.
How does one not miss out from this essential part of the human experience? I don’t choose
to not believe in a god, or spirits, or higher powers. That’s just how I understand the world.
But I still crave for spirituality. When Nietzsche announced the death of God, he wasn’t just
cheering for it… he was also worried. The death of God, or the death of religious influence,
frees us, sure; it allows us to engage with the world on our own terms.
But the death of God also announces the death of meaning for many people.
This freedom comes with a cost. If God doesn’t exist, if the world isn’t shaped for us by a
higher being who cares for us, if there is no afterlife, then what even is the point of living?
How can I find purpose? How can I satisfy my need for spirituality, my need to believe?
So Tarkovsky gives to the viewer the feeling of believing. But what does that even mean? To
answer that question, I want to circle back to Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi. In every movie
Tarkovsky made, there are references to artworks, usually religious ones,
from Ivan’s childhood, where Ivan admires the Four Horseman
of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer, to Tarkovsky’s last movie, The Sacrifice,
where Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi becomes a recurring theme in the movie.
The Sacrifice begins with a 5 minute still of Leonardo’s painting, before slowly revealing
the tree in the background. Tarkovsky is juxtaposing Leonardo’s painting to
his own work, that’ll be important later. Shortly after, the double stairs appear,
which make a clear reference to the temple in the background of the Adoration of the Magi.
Later, we’ll see these same stairs, but with Chaos surrounding it, as they are in the painting.
The main character Alexander and his friend Otto first face the painting in this scene:
Then, we see Alexander, literally seeing himself, on the day of his birthday, in this painting.
I started making this video thinking I could summarize and analyze the movie for you.
I won’t do that. I won’t do it for two reasons:
First, and it’s been said already, Tarkovsky’s movies aren’t meant to be deconstructed and
analyzed. Doing that would be defeating the very essence of the movie. As I said,
it’s a spiritual experience, he makes you feel the feeling of believing.
Breaking that down, “using the microscope like a cudgel”, as Alexander would say,
risks cheapening that experience. Talking about it with friends and family,
debating about your interpretations of that experience might be a better way to
engage with that work of art, I don’t think the video essay is the proper tool for it.
The second reason as to why I won’t summarize and analyze the movie for you is because it’s not that
important to the point I’m trying to make. So what exactly is the point I’m trying to make?
Tarkovsky is using artworks, usually from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance,
because there’s a sense of religiosity or spirituality
inherent to these works. This is what Alexander has to say about it:
Leonardo is quite similar to this, minus the childlike innocence of course. We see these
works of art as if they had a closer proximity to a God or spirituality, perhaps just because
they’re old and somewhat mysterious, a mystery we associate to spirituality. But these works,
which meant to convey supernatural ideas of a transcending power, are as close to God or
spirituality as many works of art today. We see Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi, an
unfinished painting, it’s mysterious, it depicts religion, it’s meant to connect with believers,
and we automatically associate it with the mystical, it gains power. Tarkovsky plays into
that by giving these works significance, by giving them importance in his movies, but what he does
most crucially is that he’s creating parallels between these artworks and his own work. It’s
undeniable, The Sacrifice and Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi are intertwined,
from Alexander seeing himself in the painting, to the juxtaposition of Maria and Mary at the end of
the movie, to the double staircase and, finally, the tree, which serves as bookends for this movie.
This painting has power and this power is easily recognizable even if you’re not religious like
I am. Tarkovsky is saying, there’s still a place for these works of art, ones with spiritual power,
ones that can make even the unbelievers experience faith, there’s still a place for them today. It’s
not just a Middle Age thing, it’s not just a Renaissance thing, it’s a human thing.
And as an atheist, that’s how I can admire Tarkovsky’s movies. He’s filling
the spiritual void in our hearts, not with religion, belief or faith, but with art.
After watching a Tarkovsky movie, you don’t get closer to God, or faith, you get closer
to an understanding of spirituality that, though you may not adhere to as I don’t, you can feel.
The idea that you’re not alone in the world, that we’re all connected by different but
similar feelings, interests and experiences, that all of this can be communicated and
concentrated in works of art that speak to you, that’s as close as I’ll get to spirituality.
The world may be meaningless, but it’s hard to believe that after watching Tarkovsky.