 |
Last Supper Leonardo
da Vinci was already
a well-known artist
when he created
his masterpiece
The Last Supper.
He painted it on
the wall of the
Dominican convent
of Santa Maria
delle Grazie, in
oil. It took him
four years to complete
- 1495 to 1498.
The Last Supper,
one of the world's
most famous paintings,
is a sacrifice
to Leonardo's love
to experiment.
Leonardo, always
the inventor, tried
using new materials
for The Last Supper.
Instead of using
egg tempera on
wet plaster (the
preferred method
of fresco painting,
and one which had
worked successfully
for centuries),
he thought he'd
use dry plaster
which wasn't at
all durable. The
painted plaster
began to flake
off the wall almost
immediately, and
people have been
attempting to restore
it ever since.
The painting began
to decay even before
his death; the
damage was made
worse by clumsy
efforts to repaint
it. Worst of all,
somebody cut away
part of the painting
in order to make
a doorway through
the wall directly
under the central
figure of Jesus.
|
