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Summary
Summary
Early in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci began work in Milan on what would become one of history's most influential and beloved works of art- The Last Supper . After a dozen years at the court of Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, Leonardo was at a low point personally and professionally: at forty-three, in an era when he had almost reached the average life expectancy, he had failed, despite a number of prestigious commissions, to complete anything that truly fulfilled his astonishing promise. His latest failure was a giant bronze horse to honor Sforza's father: His 75 tons of bronze had been expropriated to be turned into cannons to help repela French invasion of Italy. The commission to paint The Last Supper in the refectory of a Dominican convent was a small compensation, and his odds of completing it were not promising: Not only had he never worked on a painting of such a large size-15' high x 30' wide-but he had no experience in the extremely difficult medium of fresco.
In his compelling new book, Ross King explores how-amid war and the political and religious turmoil around him, and beset by his own insecurities and frustrations-Leonardo created the masterpiece that would forever define him. King unveils dozens of stories that are embedded in the painting. Examining who served as the models for the Apostles, he makes a unique claim: that Leonardo modeled two of them on himself. Reviewing Leonardo's religious beliefs, King paints a much more complex picturethan the received wisdom that he was a heretic. The food that Leonardo, a famous vegetarian, placed on the table reveals as much as do the numerous hand gestures of those at Christ's banquet.
As King explains, many of the myths that have grown up around The Last Supper are wrong, but its true story is ever more interesting. Bringing to life a fascinating period in European history, Ross King presents an original portrait of one of the world's greatest geniuses through the lens of his most famous work.
Author Notes
Ross King is the highly praised author of Brunelleschi's Dom e (the Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year in 2000), Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling (on the New York Times extended bestseller list), The Judgment of Paris , Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power , and two novels, Ex Libris and Domino . He lives outside Oxford in England.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Detail obsessed, easily distracted, and a notorious deadline-buster, Leonardo da Vinci was able to complete one of his two best works in just three years-all against a backdrop of war and occupation of Milan. King's (Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling) detailed accounting of the political situation in 15th-century Italy and how it informs our understanding of The Last Supper is interspersed with analysis of history's many interpretations of the painting, including the "typical crackpottery that follows Leonardo." The book addresses such topics as the groupings of the apostles and their hand placement; readings of the painting as glorifying faith; and whether the figure next to Jesus depicts the apostle John or Mary Magdalene. King provides a fascinating look at the artist's life, including his reputation among his patrons as unreliable, and his relationships with those he worked with and for-including a young boy named Giacomo, who "held a great physical attraction for Leonardo." However, King's speculations are never salacious; rather, they help place Leonardo's life into the context of Florence's history of sexual tolerance and subsequent religious crackdowns. Though some of King's political explorations and discussions of symbolism can drag, the book proves most lively when tackling common misconceptions about the painting, with The Da Vinci Code coming in for special criticism. 16-page color insert and b&w reproductions. Agent: Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* With pink tights, a notebook hanging from his belt, long hair, and beard, handsome, fit 42-year-old Leonardo cut quite a figure on the streets of Milan, where he had high hopes for major commissions from the duchy's cunning ruler, Lodovico Sforza. For all his brilliance, as King explains with commiseration, respectful amusement, and meticulous documentation, Leonardo had little to show for himself beyond his notoriety for infuriating patrons. Consequently, he was ecstatic when Sforza agreed to fund the making of a truly monumental bronze horse. But war waits for no man, not even a relentlessly inquisitive, left-handed, vegetarian genius. After the 75 tons of metal meant for his equine colossus were turned into cannons, Leonardo was asked to paint a mural 15 feet high and nearly 30 feet long in the Dominican refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie depicting the Last Supper. This is quintessential King territory, and his uniquely detailed, far-ranging, and engrossing chronicle of the creation of this revolutionary masterpiece, a quantum shift in art, perfectly complements his best-selling Michelangelo & the Pope's Ceiling (2003). Himself an exceptional portraitist and craftsman, King brings to precise life a fully dimensional, irresistibly audacious, and wizardly Leonardo and his powerfully affecting, miraculously surviving mural, a glorious culmination of the artist's astounding powers of observation and exhilarating vision of the world. --Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
Guardian Review
Leonardo da Vinci's dramatic Last Supper in the former refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan is the largest of his paintings it covers over 40 sq m of the refectory's north wall and many think it his greatest. It would probably be called the most famous painting in the world if that unverifiable accolade had not already been accorded to a certain moody portrait of a Florentine housewife, which he also did. It took him and his team of assistants about three years to complete. No contract for it survives, but it was almost certainly commissioned by his patron, Lodovico Sforza, in 1494, and we know he was still at work on it in 1497 because an entry in the monastery accounts records a payment to some workmen for repairing "a window in the refectory where Leonardo is painting the Apostles". Numerous sketches, notes and preparatory drawings chart the long and sometimes troubled gestation of "this restless masterpiece" (as Jacob Burckhardt described it), and the latest restoration, completed in 1999, has revealed a wealth of information about the techniques Leonardo used. One important technical fact that has been known for centuries is that The Last Supper was not painted using traditional fresco technique (watercolour and egg-tempera on moist plaster) but with an experimental oil-based medium. The chief advantage of this was compositional oils gave him the subtle tonalities that were his trademark, and the opportunity to rethink and rework as he went along but in practical terms it was a disaster. On a wall prone to damp, the paint surface quickly deteriorated. By 1517, a diarist noted, it was already "beginning to spoil", and by the time Giorgio Vasari saw it in the 1550s there was little more than a "muddle of blots". For centuries it was subjected to invasive restorations and heavy-handed retouchings. It suffered further vicissitides in the early 19th century, when Napoleon's soldiers used the refectory as a stable, and in 1943, when an RAF bomb landed on the Grazie, leaving the mural exposed to the elements for several months. To the inherent charisma of the painting is added this chequered history of self-inflicted fragility and semi-miraculous survival. The story of Leonardo's creation of the work has now found an ideal chronicler in Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, which have won plaudits for their concise, close-focus study of great renaissance achievements. King has the gift of clear, unpretentious exposition, and an instinctive narrative flair. Here he cross-cuts between the political tensions of 1490s Milan with expansionist threats from France culminating in the invasion of 1499 and the dogged concentration of Leonardo at the Grazie. He ferrets through various aspects of the mural and its composition the "secret recipes" of paints and glazes; the complex geometry of the perspective, which makes the fictive space seem like an actual annex of the refectory; the wave-like formation of agitated apostles' heads as they react to Christ's announcement of impending betrayal; the eerie exactitide of the vanishing point, marked by a nail-hole just visible on the paint surface around Christ's right temple. Wonderful details have been recovered by the restorers the food on the table includes not just the beakers of wine and crusts of bread of traditional Last Supper iconography, but a wholly unexpected platter of sliced eel garnished with pieces of orange. This cues in a brief but informative foray into the popularity of eel in renaissance cuisine, though King has missed a more personal note, which is a pungent menu of "eels, apricots and peppered bread" found, in the form of a shopping list, among Leonardo's papers. There is also some evidence about the models Leonardo used. In a little notebook we learn that a certain Alessandro Carissimo from Parma was the model for Christ's hand. A jotting in the same notebook reads "crissto: giovan conte", which probably gives us the name of the model for Christ. This is curious in that the most plausible Giovanni Conte so far discovered was a soldier in the militia of Ascanio Sforza, and later (like Leonardo) in the service of the warlord Cesare Borgia, so it seems that most serene and poignant of faces is actually that of a military man. The Dan Brown theory, that the figure immedately to the left of Christ represents Mary Magdalene, is given short shrift. It is obviously a dreamily effeminate St John, the disciple "whom Jesus loved" and who "leaned on Jesus' bosom": he is, as King says, another of those "hypnotic androgynes" (like the angel in the Virgin of the Rocks and the Louvre John the Baptist) who add a homoerotic tremor to Leonardo's treatment of sacred subjects. King's most adventurous claim in this area is that St James the Less (the second apostle from the left) is a self-portrait. He is shown in profile, and compares quite well with the red-chalk profile portrait of Leonardo by Francesco Melzi. But that was done at least 12 years after The Last Supper was finished. (A probable portrait much closer in time is in the the remaining fragments of a fresco by Leonardo's friend Donato Bramante, painted in Milan in the 1490s.) This apostolic self-portrait remains an intriguing possibility, nonetheless: more food for thought from a book that offers an engaging and unusually intimate view of one of the great icons of western art.
Kirkus Review
An absorbing study of a disappearing masterpiece. King (Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven, 2010, etc.) tells the story of the most famous painting no one has really seen, at least since the 16th century: The Last Supper, the masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci that began deteriorating almost as soon as the paint dried. King places the painting in its political, social and artistic context, describing both the meaning of da Vinci's work and the violent 15th-century Italian world that spawned it. Proof that art, like life, sometimes happens when you're making other plans, da Vinci's greatest painting came about because his dream project--an enormous horse-and-rider sculpture honoring the father of his patron, Lodovico Sforza--was scuttled when Italy needed the bronze for war. For the next two years, da Vinci painted the scene of Jesus and his disciples on the wall of a monastery. In its masterful use of perspective, complementary color and achievement of lifelike detail, it marked a turning point for Western art. King plumbs the painting's religious, secular, psychological and political meanings, registered in the facial expressions and hand positions, the significance of the food on the table and, most fascinatingly, the salt spilled by the betraying Judas. (And no, Dan Brown, Mary Magdalene is not in it.) Alas, da Vinci's ignorance of the fresco technique meant the pigments did not bond to the plaster, and the paint would begin flaking within years. As early as 1582, it was described as being "in a state of total ruin." Thankfully, King's book is an impressive work of restoration--the author helps readers see this painting for the first time.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
King (Brunelleschi's Dome) celebrates Leonardo da Vinci in this engaging biography centered on the artist's creation of one of his masterpieces, The Last Supper, in Santa Maria della Grazia in Milan. He touches upon some of the major forces of Leonardo's time: Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, who commissioned the painting to glorify the Sforza dynasty; Charles XIII of France, whose troops invaded and, for a time, ruled parts of Italy; as well as the ecclesiastic fabric of Renaissance life, which supported the creation of many great works of art. King explores Leonardo's painting techniques and explores many factors that may have figured into its creation such as the divinely inspired proportion of the golden section (knowledge derived from Leonardo's relationship with the mathematician Luca Pacioli) as well as an explication of the various poses of the figures in the painting itself, which King speculates might be based on gestures commonly used by 15th-century Italians. VERDICT A fascinating and in-depth story of one of the world's most famous works of art that will appeal to general readers as well as academics. Highly recommended.-Ellen Bates, New York (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Map of Italy in 1494 | p. viii |
| Sforza-Visconti Family Tree | p. ix |
| The Last Supper with Apostles Identified | p. xi |
| Chapter 1 The Bronze Horse | p. 1 |
| Chapter 2 Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man | p. 17 |
| Chapter 3 The Cenacolo | p. 40 |
| Chapter 4 Dinner in Jerusalem | p. 52 |
| Chapter 5 Leonardo's Court | p. 68 |
| Chapter 6 The Holy League | p. 86 |
| Chapter 7 Secret Recipes | p. 100 |
| Chapter 8 "Trouble from This Side and That" | p. 115 |
| Chapter 9 Every Painter Paints Himself | p. 124 |
| Chapter 10 A Sense of Perspective | p. 141 |
| Chapter 11 A Sense of Proportion | p. 159 |
| Chapter 12 The Beloved Disciple | p. 180 |
| Chapter 13 Food and Drink | p. 200 |
| Chapter 14 The Language of the Hands | p. 220 |
| Chapter 15 "No One Loves the Duke" | p. 243 |
| Epilogue: Tell Me If I Ever Did a Thing | p. 265 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 277 |
| Notes | p. 279 |
| Selected Bibliography | p. 311 |
| Illustration Credits | p. 323 |
| Index | p. 325 |
