Book description
Milan, 1496 and forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation
for taking on commissions and failing to complete them. He is in a state
of professional uncertainty and financial difficulty. For eighteen
months he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan
and the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter
project will become the Last Supper, a complex mural that took a full
three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet
wide. Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size, but he
had no experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding
medium of fresco. For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been
an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth
Clark has called it the keystone of European art , and for a century
after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous
image. Even today, according to Clark, we regard the painting as more a
work of nature than a work of man . And yet there is a very human story
behind this artistic miracle , which was created against the backdrop of
momentous events both in Milan and in the life of Leonardo himself. In
Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King tells the complete story of this
creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during
its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for
Christ and the Apostles that he used; and the numerous personalities
involved - everyone from the Leonardo s young assistants to Ludovico
Sforza, the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross King s new
book is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci s last five years in Milan
and a biography of one of the most famous works of art ever painted
[A] richly entertaining tale of how Leonardo came to paint The Last
Supper. King, who had previously written acclaimed accounts of
Brunelleschi's Florentine dome and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel
ceiling, has an infectious relish for the gaudy, brutal and brilliant
world of the Italian Renaissance Mail on Sunday Extraordinary Sunday
Times 'Must Reads' Enthralling. **** Daily Mail Milan, 1496 and
forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on
commissions and failing to complete them. He is in a state of
professional uncertainty and financial difficulty. For eighteen months
he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan and the
refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter project
will become the Last Supper, a complex mural that took a full three
years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide.
Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size, but he had no
experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding medium of
fresco. For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been an
artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark
has called it the keystone of European art , and for a century after its
creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. Even
today, according to Clark, we regard the painting as more a work of
nature than a work of man . And yet there is a very human story behind
this artistic miracle , which was created against the backdrop of
momentous events both in Milan and in the life of Leonardo himself. In
Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King tells the complete story of this
creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during
its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for
Christ and the Apostles that he used; and the numerous personalities
involved - everyone from the Leonardo s young assistants to Ludovico
Sforza, the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross King s new
book is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci s last five years in Milan
and a biography of one of the most famous works of art ever painted
