Leonardo Da Vinci - The Last Supper

New Hardback in excellent condition. 357 unmarked pages. First Edition. Post €7 can include 4 other items postfree.
Milan, 1496, and 44 year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on commissions and failing to complete.
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 takes a full three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide.

Not only has he never attempted a painting of such size, but he has 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 Sir 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. 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.
Leonardo and The Last Supper is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci's last 5 years in Milan & a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever.