Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Leonardo da Vinci
During the 15th century wealthy Lombards like the Della Scala family in Verona and the
Gonzaga in Mantua played a key role in patronising and promoting the great artists of the
day, and even wealthy merchants, abbots and bankers spent their hard-earned coin on
frescoing their townhouses, fashioning extraordinary mausoleums and commissioning fres-
coes and portraits. Medici banker Pigello Portinari commissioned Vicenzo Foppa to paint
his private chapel in Milan; Venetian commander Bartolomeo Colleoni engaged Pavian ar-
chitect and sculptor Giovanni Amadeo to fashion his polychrome marble mausoleum, the
Cappella Colleoni, in Bergamo; and Cardinal Castiglioni hired Florentine Masolino to paint
the charming frescoes in Castiglione Olona in Varese province.
From the fruitful partnership between Ludovico Sforza and Leonardo, Milan's (and pos-
sibly the world's) most famous painting was to emerge. Leonardo's depiction of
Il Cen-
acolo
(
The Last Supper
; 1495-98), painted on a wall of the refectory adjoining the Chiesa
di Santa Maria delle Grazie, shows Christ and his disciples at dinner during the dramatic
moment when Christ reveals he is aware one of his followers will betray him. It is a mas-
terful psychological study.
For Leonardo, painting was all about capturing the details, details which he tirelessly re-
corded in his famous sketchbook. In his treatise on painting he stated the artist had two
goals: the first to represent man, and the second to capture the intentions of his mind. While
the first had already been ably demonstrated by Pisanello, Mantegna, Bramante and Foppa,
the second was much harder. Leonardo concluded the only way to do this was by capturing
men's expressive 'gestures and movements'. It was this that he so masterfully translated in-
to
The Last Supper
, where the drama of the scene is embodied in the disciples' reactions,
both physical (upsetting glasses, recoiling backwards, lifting knives and leaning in) and in
their varied facial expressions (mouths agape, brows furrowed, expressions incredulous).
So outstandingly good was Leonardo's composition that almost before the paint dried
demand grew for copies. Princes, cardinals, churches and monasteries all wanted a replica,
much in the way that everyone wanted a relic of the True Cross.
The Last Supper
was en-
graved as early as 1498 and Giampietrino executed the most faithful copy on canvas in
1520 and many other copies followed in fresco, panel, canvas, marble and tapestry. Copies
were produced in Venice, Antwerp and Paris. The Certosa di Pavia even had two versions.
But while the results were spectacular, Leonardo's choice of oil paint was flawed; unlike
traditional egg tempera, the oil paint did not bond successfully with the plaster and within a
