Leonardo, The Last Supper

Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, Pietro C. Marani, Harlow Tighe

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Italian

University of Chicago Press
02 April 2001

Conservation, restoration & care of artworks; Renaissance art; Painting & paintings

Leonardo's Last Supper, one of the most important works of the Renaissance if not all of Western art, was painted between 1494 and 1498 in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. From the moment that the prior at the monastery complained to Leonardo that the work was taking too long, the Last Supper has endured centuries of controversy, neglect, and difficulty. Leonardo, The Last Supper, translated from the Italian, is the definitive document of the recently completed project to reverse these centuries of decline by restoring the painting and preserving it in a manner that generations of conservators have failed to do.

The technical problems with the Last Supper began as soon as Leonardo started to paint it. He jettisoned the traditional fresco technique of applying paint to wet plaster, a method unsuited to Leonardo's slow and thorough execution, and created the work instead with an experimental technique that involved painting directly on the dry plaster. With this renegade method, Leonardo rendered one of the most enduring painting techniques volatile and unstable. Added to this initial complication have been centuries of pollution, tourists, candle smoke, and the ravages of age, not to mention food fights in the refectory staged by Napoleonic soldiers and Allied bombs in 1943. By the middle of the twentieth century, the Last Supper was in desperate need of a complete restoration.

Pinin Brambilla Barcilon was chosen to head this twenty-year project, and Leonardo, The Last Supper is the official record of her remarkable effort. It first documents the cleaning and removal of the overpainting performed in the other attempts at restoration and then turns to Barcilon's meticulous additions in watercolor, which were based on Leonardo's preparatory drawings, early copies of the painting, and contemporary textual descriptions. This book presents full-scale reproductions of details from the fresco that clearly display and distinguish Leonardo's hand from that of the restorer. With nearly 400 sumptuous color reproductions, the most comprehensive technical documentation of the project by Barcilon, and an introductory essay by art historian and project codirector Pietro C. Marani that focuses on the history of the fresco, Leonardo, The Last Supper is an invaluable historic record, an extraordinarily handsome book, and an essential volume for anyone who appreciates the beauty, technical achievements, and fate of Renaissance painting.

By: Pinin Brambilla Barcilon, Pietro C. Marani
Translated by: Harlow Tighe
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 29mm, Width: 26mm, Spine: 5mm
Weight: 3.402kg
ISBN: 9780226504278
ISBN 10: 0226504271
Pages: 458
Publication Date: 02 April 2001
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational , A / AS level , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Pinin Brambilla Barcilon is one of the world's foremost authorities on the conservation of Renaissance frescoes. She has published widely on the subject and is responsible for a number of important technical advancements in the field. For the last twenty years, she has served as the chief conservator of the project to restore the Last Supper. Pietro C. Marani is a curator and Renaissance scholar who specializes in the life and production of Leonardo da Vinci. His books include Leonardo: I Maestri, Leonardo and Venice, and Leonardo: Catalogo Completo dei Dipinti. Harlow Tighe is a translator living in Milan.

Reviews for Leonardo, The Last Supper

This massive volume testifies to a great love of both Leonardo's crumbling masterpieces and the meticulous craft of art restoration. . . . Although this most recent and ambitious restoration is controversial, the results-------exhaustively photographed here, in full-scale as well as reductions--are impressive, with lines emerging as simultaneously more subtle and more forceful, and the shadows, particularly in the striking figure of Philip, as more mysterious and tender. --Laura Miller Salon