Leonardo's Last Supper.

"With a glint of a dagger and a blaze of celestial light, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper burst into new life on Monday night after Peter Greenaway finally secured permission to reinvent the crumbling, 510-year-old masterpiece as a sound and light show," reports Robert Booth, who also talks with the filmmaker for the Guardian in a terrific audio supplement; also, a mini-gallery.

For the New York Times, Elisabetta Povoledo was among a "select few" to witness the multimedia performance: "Obscure details lost to time, overpainting and subsequent restorations were brought to the fore.... It was the second installment in a broader project in which he has harnessed the tools of the laptop generation to instruct what he has called a 'visually illiterate' society. The goal, he says, is to explore the potential interaction between '113 years of cinema and 8000 years of painting.'"

Online viewing tip. Peter Greenaway's official site has video.

Posted by dwhudson at July 2, 2008 12:50 AM