Does moving pictures produce ekstasis? Challenge to Leonardo and Michelangelo

Abstract

What do we feel and understand when we look at Leonardo's Last Supper and Michelangelo's frescoes projected on the screens? The history of the production of films, critofilms, television documentaries, amateur movies on the web, devoted to these masterpieces of Renaissance art is a constantly growing world of moving imagery, coming before the era of the recent media experiences. It is difficult to say exactly when the first movie camera was introduced into S. Maria delle Grazie’s refectory in Milan, or into the Sistine Chapel in Vatican. We know however that the huge filmed material concerning these two works is unequalled by any other figurative testimony. This paper intends, on the one hand, to focus in a historical perspective on the relationship between the pictorial work and the cinematic work, that is a real technical and narrative “challenge” to the pictorial language of both these Renaissance masters; on the other hand, it intends to pose some critical questions on media practices and their possible future development. From Ėjzenštejn to Greenaway (for the Last Supper), from Oertel to the immersive show (for the Sistine frescoes); from Ragghianti to the RAI TV documentaries after the restoration by the end of the XXth century.