Leonardo And The Last Supper

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.

The Rizzoli Quadrifolio art series combines the most popular artists with authoritative text and a fresh, unique format destined to appeal to children and adults alike. Featuring sixteen pages that open up to four times the individual page size, this series allow the reader to delve into the details of individual paintings or see the horiztontal development in a fresco. With stunning color reproductions, expert commentary, and a revolutionary format, Rizzoli Quadrifolios is a pioneering art series. Following the success of Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt and Caravaggio is Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper, a book dedicated to perhaps one of the most important and recognizable works of art ever created. Heralded as the Renaissance master's most important work, the reader is afforded extraordinary details of this quickly deteriorating fresco. Located in a small monastery in Milan, the work has recently been restored so that the delicate faces which register, with great subtlety, the gravity of the moment at which Christ announces to his apostles that one among them will betray him, are visible once again. Every inch of the work is reproduced here in illuminating close-ups so that the masterpiece can be appreciated anew.

For more than five centuries The Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark called it 'the keystone of European art', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic 'miracle'. Ross King's Leonardo and the Last Supper is both a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted and a record of Leonardo da Vinci's last five years in Milan.

When Leonardo da Vinci is commissioned to paint 'The Last Supper', he believes it will seal his reputation as the finest artist in Italy. Yet all does not go as planned. The notorious Papal emissary, Father Rodrigo of Salamanca accuses him of blasphemy over his decision to choose a lowly peasant, Alessandro, to be his model for Jesus. To Leonardo's horror, Alessandro takes on quasi-religious significance for the populace of Milan, dragging both into a journey of political and religious upheaval, violence and scandal, which eventually leads to their climactic confrontation.

"From 1501 to 1505, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti both lived and worked in Florence. Leonardo was a charming, handsome fifty year-old at the peak of his career. Michelangelo was a temperamental sculptor in his mid-twenties, desperate to make a name for himself. The two despise each other."--Front jacket flap.

In 2017 the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction for $450m. But is it a real da Vinci? In a thrilling narrative built on formidable research, Ben Lewis tracks the extraordinary journey of a masterpiece lost and found, lied and fought over across the centuries.