Excerpt from “Truth and Ambiguity,” a talk given by Milton Glaser at the Brand Identity Conference, 2004, in New York City.

“Make it clear.” This fundamental assumption of communication would seem to be an attainable goal. Objectify the audience, understand their desires—appeal to their interests, eliminate the extraneous, and presto, “effective communication.” Well, maybe not.

The Last Supper, arguably the greatest painting ever created, is a masterpiece of ambiguity.

The finger of Saint Thomas anticipates his “doubting” role in the Resurrection.

Some months ago I came upon a book by Leo Steinberg called Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, based on what may be the greatest single work of Western painting, Leonardo DaVinci’s The Last Supper. I’ve always loved the painting and have been looking at it for over a half-century beginning with a penny print I bought in kindergarten. In 1951, not many years after World War II, I viewed it for the first time. It was in terrible shape, covered with mold and dirt and darkened by centuries of wear and bad restoration. Nevertheless, the genius that Leonardo had invested in the work showed through and could not be denied. I had occasion to visit Milan frequently because I was doing a lot of work for Olivetti, at that time one of the most progressive of all European industrial concerns. In the ‘80s they initiated a complete restoration of the painting. Sadly, Olivetti is no longer an extraordinary example of how a corporation can be a good citizen as well as a profitable business. In fact, it no longer exists.

The two hands of Christ depict his dual nature.

On one of my visits to Italy, Olivetti arranged for me to see the painting, which was in the process of being restored. I say painting instead of fresco because, as many of you know, The Last Supper was an experiment in using the untested pigments and binders that Leonardo was interested in. This is one of the reasons the work has fared so badly since it was first created.

On a scaffold next to the painting, I saw an attractive, middle-aged matron in a brown business suit concentrating on the face of Christ. Dr. Pinin Brambilla Barcillon, who had the incredible responsibility of restoring the work single-handedly, motioned me up to the scaffold alongside her, inches away from the head of Christ, the centerpiece of the painting towards which all forms converged. I cannot describe my emotions as I realized the privilege of seeing Leonardo’s work from a vantage point that few will ever have.

One square inch a day

The fragmented head of Christ is the centerpiece of the painting.

The head was a pointillist composition of tiny dots and fragments of color that dissolved into an abstraction as you got closer. Dr. Brambilla sat behind an optical instrument that illuminated one square inch of the painting’s surface at a time (a day’s work) as she looked through a magnifying lens. Her primary tools were a scalpel, a cotton swab, soap, and water. Layer by layer, she was cleaning away the dirt, waxes, varnish, and overpainting of centuries. I tried to imagine what might be going through her mind, considering that if she took one extra swipe with her swab, the world’s most precious patch of paint could be irreversibly obliterated. As it was, only half the original pigment of Christ’s face existed once the various retouchings had been carefully removed. After revealing the real Leonardo fragment, Dr. Brambilla would float in a thin neutral film of watercolor around it to unify the image.

As I looked at it, I realized that re-creating the image in the mind, out of the bits and pieces that remain, makes the work even more evocative than it might have been originally, a point I want to get to a bit later.

I’ve returned to revisit the sublime masterpiece at ground level many times since then, and I urge all of you to do the same, since the painting and the space it defines are unreproducible. The first thing you’ll observe is that your preconceptions about Leonardo’s style are challenged—it is not dark and defined by dramatic chiaroscuro. On the contrary, it is more like an impressionist painting full of fragmented cerulean blue, white, and pink. Despite all of this, I never understood why the work was so compelling until I read Leo Steinberg’s remarkable book.

Separate ideas, simultaneously conveyed

The painting is a demonstration of how the brain works and a revelation of how belief conditions our senses of reality. It is not an attempt to illustrate one moment in time. That apparently was too simple for Leonardo. If you approach the work with the idea that it illustrates the words “One of you shall betray me,” all the figures in the painting assume poses that clearly respond to those words with shock, horror, and revulsion. One of the principles of Renaissance communication was that the position of a figure revealed character and emotion.

On the other hand, if you shift the message you hold in your mind to the institution of the Eucharist, “Take this and eat; this is my body,” the meaning of the apostles’ gestures changes before your eyes in response to this first call to communion. Think of it: two completely separate ideas in two different moments in time being simultaneously conveyed.

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