The Last Supper: The Living Tableau Overview

Visionary Creator / Director Armondo Linus Acosta, known throughout his life and career for manifesting works of extraordinary beauty, brings the mystical power of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic 15^th Century masterwork, The Last Supper, to life for 21^st Century audiences. “The Living Tableau”, with a nine-minute running time, is an exquisite filmic re-creation, in exacting detail and subtle nuance, of Da Vinci’s incomparable 15^th Century masterwork.

By marrying the genius of the Renaissance master with the creativity of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, set designer Dante Ferretti and set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo, each a winner of three Academy Awards^®, Acosta and his artistic Dream Team have captured the transcendent light and the transformational essence of the most illustrious gathering in history; the final meal Jesus shared with the apostles before His crucifixion.

“The Living Tableau”, with a running time of nine minutes, was first presented in 2019 as part of the global celebration of the 500^th Anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death, commemorating his timeless influence on both art and life. In addition to being featured in cultural institutions, it has been projected onto a number of iconic building façades to the delight of outdoor audiences.

The scene opens on a poetic and timeless landscape, to the first resonating notes of Rossini’s Stabat Mater. The room and iconic table are slowly revealed, as the Apostles expectantly await the arrival of Jesus. There are whispers and subtle movements as the twelve wonder why they have been gathered, with each Apostle experiencing his own quiet confusion and range of human emotion. Jesus enters and takes His central position. Upon blessing the disciples and the meal, the announcement of a betrayal from one amongst them is felt by all, as the Twelve Apostles move into the exact positions depicted in Leonardo’s painting.

The director filmed the living portrait in ‘extreme slow motion,’ lending time to the viewer for quiet contemplation. Acosta says, “I consider this a work of art on film, a ‘tableau’; a painstakingly accurate work whereby you have the opportunity to meditate on the divine details of Leonardo’s extraordinary mystical masterwork. I want people to have the direct living experience as passionately and divinely inspired as possible”.

Acosta’s awe-inspiring interpretation of The Last Supper is the pinnacle of his personal commitment and lifelong pursuit of artistic integrity, spiritual understanding, passion for beauty and abiding admiration for Leonardo.

Lovers of art and beauty, and people of all backgrounds, faiths and religions will have their own personal and profound connection with Leonardo, and with the Divine, when they experience The Last Supper: The Living Tableau.

The Creator’s Unprecedented View of The Last Supper

The way Acosta captured Da Vinci’s masterwork goes far beyond ‘film’, providing viewers with an unprecedented way to view it. Acosta said “Every square inch of what we recreated is divinely almost identical to Leonardo’s painting, with all the work, and all the detail. I intentionally filmed “The Living Tableau” in ‘extreme’ slow motion, as I do not consider this work a film, per se, but a ‘tableau’! This is a painstakingly accurate piece whereby you have the opportunity to meditate on the divine detail of the extraordinary mystical masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci.”

Acosta adds, “In the history of the creation of The Last Supper, no one has ever zoomed back from the background, and in this tableau, we did just that! The beauty in the creation of the cinema lens is just beyond, beyond, because there is a central point in the center of a lens which is called the nodal point. That nodal point didn’t exist in anyone’s mind back then, but Leonardo saw that; he saw that there was a point of origin. One can get very cosmic with it and go out into space...but, right here in this studio, there was a re-creation of the simplicity and perfection of the nodal point of a lens. We ended up not looking at it as anyone would look at this. We started from an infinity and we pulled back to the maximum somewhere along the way, to a point that the world will be comfortable with.”

Acosta offers the highest praise to Storaro for his impeccable and “beautiful solution” to the challenge of capturing Leonardo’s challenging perspective, saying “I watched it very carefully, and the way Vittorio handled and manifested that and the fact that he took the impossible task of a zoom back from an infinity to a master of something that was based on the central theme of perspective, and the nodal point, is masterful. I must honor him. It was brilliant! Brilliant!”.

In addition to “The Living Tableau” being screened around the world, it will also serve as the opening sequence of The Last Supper — A Divine Prophecy, Acosta’s latest feature film, currently in production. Far from a 'stereotypical' portrayal of the life of Jesus and His disciples, the film will be unlike any other, exploring the Apostles experiences and deep human realities in a non-linear manner and in a variety of timeframes. The telling unfolds through a collection of short film sequences — each a standalone production with elegant cinematography, production design, music and a unique narrative — creating a mosaic of meaning and understanding. Each sequence is experiential, profound and intimate, transcending our traditional understanding of time and religious dogma. Scenes will include the exploration of the true essence of Baptism, Judas’ excruciating inner conflict, the Crucifixion and the true nature of love, as well as the Apostles’ struggles and private moments of devotion. 

For many of those who will have a chance to experience Leonardo’s masterpiece, “The Living Tableau” will be life-changing, for others thought-provoking. One could imagine that Da Vinci, one of history's greatest visionaries in both art and science, might have foreshadowed the era of cinema and the Last Supper coming to life in this way; that he would be open to his work being completed in a medium only possible in our modern time. Acosta, Storaro, Ferretti, Lo Schiavo and a dedicated production crew, have created an unprecedented tour de force — a divinely inspired gift of devotion, beauty and love for the world.

“The Living Tableau”:
An Experience for People of All Faiths and Beliefs

Creator / Director Acosta emphasizes that “The Living Tableau” is not religious. It’s not Catholic. A person of the Jewish faith will be as stimulated as a Zoroastrian or as a Buddhist Monk would be because it has God-presence. He explains that “It is based on Self-Realization, which is the highest, most perfect goal of man on earth — that one can actually achieve Perfection in this body, in this life. Self-realization is something that you can’t take, you can’t find — it is given to you.

“The Last Supper is not about a religious principle that only belongs to the Catholics — it is all about Self-Realization. Jesus was a Self-Realized being. There are always 40 Self-Realized ones on the planet at any time, and each one of us has their own specific karma to live out — I certainly have mine. All forty of us have our own destiny and our own work and we ALL have the same Boss. Whether you're Jewish, whether you're Muslim, whether you're Catholic, whether you're Zoroastrian, or whatever you are, whatever you believe in, we all have the same Boss — That which created us. You can call it ‘Buddha’, you can call it ‘Baba’, you can call it ‘Jesus’, you can call it ‘God the Father’, you can call it ‘The Creator’, or you can call it whatever you want — something did this and there is no copyright or trademark on the ownership of God. Whether you believe in Jesus Christ or Buddha, or Moses, or Allah, we all have to wake up and say, ‘something did this, somebody created all of this’.

“The world is needing a form of inspiration right now — the world needs to be inspired. I think it’s time to take a look back at beauty. We filmed this “Living Tableau” in a beatific way. It would have been so easy to have made this a simple documentary, where you put two lights up and you point a camera, and you roll. But together with Vittorio Storaro and Dante Ferretti and myself, we’ve made a truly beautiful work of art and that should be inspiring in itself.

“We really need beauty now. I’m an old man, I’ve been around, and I have worked with some of the great artists of the world. It’s just a nice thing to see something beautiful — that can be inspiring. And so, with our The Last Supper: The Living Tableau, we give people the opportunity to feel and be inspired; inspired by beauty and inspired on a God level — no matter what your faith and no matter what your beliefs are.”

The director also points out that “The Last Supper was, in fact, a Seder (a religious meal that is served in Jewish homes to commemorate the holiday of Passover). The so-called religious principle all started with rabbinical teaching. Religion itself really comes under the one ‘big umbrella’ of teaching people to realize that all this didn't just come from a rock — something, someone, did all this! Everything on this planet is something rare. Who made everything you see that was here long before we were here? And who made us?!!! The most complex thing one could imagine is the human being!

“No one can ignore the power of the Catholic premise, and the Catholic premise being illustrated with the fact that that The Last Supper is most illustrious gathering of men in history. And no one can ignore the omniscient, divine power of Jesus, a Realized One, that permeates this story. It's still a best-selling book — it's still the greatest story ever told. But you don’t have to be Catholic to see this tableau — it’s not at all a preachy, ‘put your hands together and go home and pray and become Catholic’ experience. It really is to just inspire you to realize that there is God. God created all of this long before religions and Leonardo.

“We need the comfort of security in this very insecure world. It’s like we feel there is a tsunami coming and we don't know what to do with that. We don't know how to be safe, so we pray… and we hope that God will make us safe. We pray to God, and we hope that the One that created all of this can help us out when we need it — and now, we need it. In a way, I see this tableau as a kind of healing. A powerful energy comes from this tableau, because of Leonardo’s divine energy and because of the Shakti (primordial Divine energy) that comes from ‘This’. “The Living Tableau” is empowered. Everyone who sees this replication of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper will receive this divine energy — no matter what one’s religion is, and no matter what one’s belief system is. Everyone who sees it will have their own deeply personal experience.”

Acosta and Storaro:
Their Shared Dream to Re‑Create The Last Supper

Armondo Linus Acosta is a longtime admirer of Vittorio Storaro’s work and has always wanted to work with the Maestro, who he considers to be “the major cinematographer alive today”. Armondo has great respect and love for Vittorio and “his energy, his passion and his intelligence. Storaro is a true artist and designer, a highly spiritual being, a consummate still photographer and a consummate cinematographer. He is the best in the business!”.

When the two first met 12 years ago, at a lunch meeting in Rome, Armondo realized that he and Vittorio shared the same passion for Da Vinci — who both agree is a “Master of Perfection” — as well as for The Last Supper. Armondo saw that Storaro was “one of the rare ones who is truly obsessed with The Last Supper”. At that lunch, Vittorio confided his “lifelong dream” to Armondo: to recreate and light Leonardo’s masterwork. Vittorio then presented Armondo with his business card, which, amazingly enough, had an image of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting on it!

After it was officially announced that Storaro would be working on “The Living Tableau”, Armondo wrote to Vittorio, “I am just giving you the brushes so that you can paint. That’s all I’m doing here”.

For Acosta, realizing “The Living Tableau” is also a dream come true. He has felt a profound connection to Da Vinci for as long as he can remember and considers him to be one of his first gurus. He has had the grace-filled and mystical experience of having been overshadowed by Da Vinci numerous times during his life, so far, beginning when he a young boy. Acosta says, “It is commonly known in high circles that Leonardo was not just a painter; he was a lover of God, he was a lover of beauty, he was a lover of women, he was a lover of men… he was an extraordinary human being, and a mystic. It's rumored that Marsilio Ficino was Da Vinci’s guru — on both a philosophic and on a God level”.

For Storaro, collaborating with Acosta on “The Living Tableau” has been the crowning glory of his longtime obsession with the iconic painting. During a Master Class that Vittorio gave to Armondo’s students at the Academy of Film and the Arts, the day after filming on ‘The Tableau’ wrapped (late January 2019), he implored them to: “Believe in your dream. Because if you believe in your dream, you send it out there, and you have much more chance to make it happen. You put a kind of shield around you — of beauty, of love, of something that you want to share, and you want to try… and somebody touches that. Armondo touched my dream for Leonardo — that’s why I’m here.”

Acosta’s Divine Revelation to Make The Last Supper

While Vittorio Storaro had his own dream regarding re-creating Da Vinci’s masterpiece, Acosta’s dream to make The Last Supper was born from it having been ‘assigned’ to him in a divine revelation.

Acosta shares how that came to be: “It’s difficult for people to believe it, but it’s absolutely a high truth. I have been a meditator all of my adult life and I have been a yogi all of my life. Being a yogi and doing what that life of spiritual study entails, it leads you to higher states of consciousness. And in that state of consciousness, there is a zone called Turya, and there is also a zone called Tandra. In a Turya state, you are seeing a separate reality. It is as real as real can be — it’s even beyond real. And in that Turya state, I hear words. You don’t hear them with your ears, you don’t hear them in your heart — it’s something you can’t describe. But the words and meanings are real…

“And, in that Turya state, I heard. ‘You will make a film of The Last Supper.’ You are semi-conscious in that state, meaning that you are able to cognize what is happening and being told to you in that state. ‘Where’s that coming from?’; ‘Who’s telling me to do this?’ — all that stuff comes up. But you get used to understanding that it is a very high command from what we call ‘Source’ — you can call it God, call it what you want.

“While in that state, I was told that I was going to make The Last Supper. There were other little innuendos that I couldn’t perceive as being as clear. But suddenly, I awakened from that state and popped to a full conscious state. Technically, when you are in those states of consciousness you have to go back in reverse, and go back through dream state, through deep sleep state, then semi-conscious state to your conscious state. I quickly went right back to a conscious state.

“I thought ‘Oh My God, what is that?!!!’ I’m finished with making films, per se — I have students that I’m teaching how to make films and little projects because I was a filmmaker. I sat on the edge of the bed and realized that’s so strange… being a ‘film baby’ all of my life with a showbiz mother, I saw every film that came out while I was in her arms. Then I realized that The Last Supper had never been made as the subject of a major film, and I thought, ‘Oh….’. Then, in my conscious mind, not as a Siddha Guru but as a filmmaker, it all started to make sense! Because in the early 1960’s, I was commissioned by the Vatican and Pope John XXII to make an important series of short films on the Psalms that were shown in the Vatican Pavilion at the 1964­­–65 World’s Fair in New York City. And I thought ‘well, that’s logical — in a way…’.

“So, then I had to come to the realization that it wasn’t just a little film — that it was The Last Supper! And that’s how it all started. I had to really consider how I was going to take on such a task, in that I’m running an international yoga, I have meditation centers, I have hundreds of disciples that I take care of and all that goes with that.

“But then, I suddenly thought of the challenge of it, and then I said, ‘quite possibly…I could do it! I know how to do this!’ Not in the ‘old Hollywood biblical film’ way, but the way I do things. It’s not going to be a Catholic film, but it has its God presence, and I will be honest and truthful to that. I think that’s why ‘They’ gave me this assignment. It was a thrill to take this project on! I have the talent and the wherewithal to do it, we have a studio, and we have an extraordinary group of collective talents. And so, we put them all together… and we did it! It was challenging, but we met every single challenge. I’m quite proud of what we all accomplished.”

The Secret of How Acosta Created “The Living Tableau”

“I was once a hired magician. They would sometimes hire me in Hollywood to do things that were strange and weird and find solutions to the most impossible creative challenges. Sometimes you could see it and sometimes you couldn’t see it. I thought, ‘How am I going to get 12 people to sit there for hours and hours, days and days, and stay in that exact same position? And how am I going to have every fold of the fabric be in that position, so that when that ‘tableau moment’ happens, it is as identical as possible to Leonardo’s painting?

“I suddenly had a thought — at the time, it sounded absolutely mad. But I called my art director and I said, ‘Koen, I’ve got to make plaster casts of my entire cast. Get them in their positions, match the painting, and make plaster casts of all their positions!’. Then my costumer Albertina put the folds of the fabric having been selected, upon selected, upon selected from pounds of fabric… and she carefully crafted every single wrinkle, and each robe was glued onto each cast. So then, all you would have to do is go behind it. And I did it myself — you get right inside there, and it fits you! You put your arm through this way or that way… and you’re completely in there. Suddenly, your entire body is matching the painting! The actual shape and form of each Apostle’s position matches Leonardo’s painting exactly! Identically! Frame by frame!

“It was a huge amount of work bringing everybody in and getting all those molds made. Then, we had to crack them so they could be maneuvered; it was most uncomfortable. The only thing that is esoteric about it, is that suddenly when everybody was together, they were all stuck together — it was like there were 12 Apostles as one unit! It was really kind of beautiful... I saw it myself. I looked it over for hours upon hours after the shoot. When you look at it, you don’t see 12 people in positions — they look like they’re all stuck together. Why? Because they are all stuck together! They are all stuck together with plaster casts. But you don’t feel it and you don’t see it — it looks like the real deal.

“So, that was challenging, but it was fun! I’ve done other weird things like that; so, for me, it was a solution. I needed to come up with a solution that would be honest and true to the replication of his masterpiece, and it wasn’t taking twelve amateurs and putting clothes on them and saying, ‘Ok, now move your arm this way!’. And then the clothing would flop and change and wouldn’t match. The people playing the Apostles would get in there and they would immediately feel like they were dressed exactly as they are in the painting. It was a lot of work and most uncomfortable…but it was fun! They had to spend hours in that position.

“At one point before the filming began, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, and I suddenly realized that I looked like the Apostle Thaddeus in The Last Supper painting! I remembered that Alfred Hitchcock had a cameo in every one of his movies — you’d see him walking onto a bus, sitting on a train, reading a newspaper or walking a dog… I worked on a Hitchcock movie, The Birds, back in 1963. I had no desire to be an actor in a movie, but I thought ‘I’ll do it!’. You can see me up there if you want to look.”