Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie with “The last supper” by Leonardo da Vinci in Milan

The building of Santa Maria delle Grazie started in 1463 after the donation of the land by Count Gaspare Vimercati, General Commander of the Sforza troops. The actual complex is the result of two main stages: a first “solariana” stage, i.e. based on the design of the famous architect Guiniforte Solari, former chief engineer at the Duomo and the Certosa di Pavia building sites, two works on which Milan worked for many decades, and a second stage between 1480 and 1497. The two moments were characterized by different architectural and stylistic choices. In the first stage, works were carried out in harmony with Lombard models with a recovery of the Romanesque style. In a second stage, starting from 1480, works were carried out on the façade of the Grazie with the building of the portal and, in an increasingly radical manner, the review and partial demolition of Solari’s church, with the building of the new tribune, less than ten years after the completion of Guiniforte Solari’s project. In 1492, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, gave Donato Bramante, considered one of the most refined architects in Italy at the time, the task of working on the unfinished building, with the purpose of enlarging it and placing his and his spouse’s remains inside. The choice of taking Bramante to the Sforza court can be read in the light of cultural expectations inspired by Renaissance values, with the intention of adhering to the new humanistic spirit both in terms of religion and architecture.

Inside the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a treasure of art, the work that, maybe with a few others, represents the core of humanistic art and, at the same time, the programmatic manifesto of the artist who gave it to history. In the western wing of one of the three cloisters, the Cloister of the Dead, is the Refectory, known for the presence of the Last Supper. The fresco, representing Jesus with the Apostles at the last supper, was painted by Leonardo da Vinci and dates to the last years of the last decade of the 15^th century: historians say that it was plausibly painted between 1494 and 1498, taking into account that the execution was preceded by a few years of accurate preparatory studies. In the painting, Leonardo shows the moment preceding Judas’s identification: Jesus just said the famous words “One of you will betray me”. Significant and important scientific considerations are behind the execution of the masterpiece by Leonardo. Leonardo’s poetics connects art and science to reach, through the painting, the maximum degree of closeness to sensory life: a unique ideal of immense humanistic value, which characterized Leonardo’s creative genius both in terms of artistic and scientific profile. The world-famous fresco in Santa Maria delle Grazie represents a sort of illustrated and figurative transposition of an acoustic, optical and dynamic law. A literally illustrative link seems to exist between Leonardo’s scientific works and the Last Supper, his handwritten thoughts on sound and light propagation and the Apostles surrounding Jesus.  This makes the work an excellent example of creativity, study and artistry without equal in the history of art.

The following passage is from a collection of works by Matteo Bandello (1485-1561), a religious, man of letters and courtier who wrote his Novelle telling real events and legendary or curious anecdotes about famous figures of his time. The text illustrates Leonardo’s creative process when the artist was working on the Last Supper.

« He used to […] mount on the scaffolding early in the morning because the last supper is quite high above the ground; he used to paint from the sunrise to the sunset, forgetting even to eat and drink. Then, he would not painted at all for two, three or four days, though spent one or two hours looking at, reviewing and judging the figures. I saw him also, following his own whim, at twelve noon, when the Sun is high, leave Corte Vecchia, where he was creating that wonderful earthen horse, and go to the Grazie and, mounting on the scaffolding, take the paintbrush and put one or two strokes on one of the figures and usually go away.

Matteo Bandello, Novella LVIII, 1497

(See Matteo Bandello, Novelle, edited by E. Menetti, Rizzoli, Milan, 2011)

The drawing can be considered the symbol of the Modern Age in western culture; it was made by Leonardo in the last decade of the 15^th century and, therefore, is coeval with the discovery of America – 1492, an epoch-making date. The iconographic motif of a naked man with open arms into a circle had been already used in medieval codices to represent the link between the microcosm (man) and the macrocosm (the universe). The ancient meaning is respected by Leonardo’s genius but taken towards a revolutionary direction, leading to the idea of the centrality of man as a wonderful, prodigious and mathematically harmonic machine. Indeed, Leonardo’s drawing derived from anthropometric reflections that, arising from the example of Vitruvius, succeeded in inscribing the exemplary human figure into the circle and the square at the same time.  Between art and science: with the drawing, Leonardo intended to create a detailed scientific model to allow artists to correctly reproduce the human figure. Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man appears on one-euro coins.

With the intention of recovering archaic motifs, in the second half of the 15^th century Lombard architecture conflicted with the trends followed by Tuscan architects working in Milan for several years.  On the one hand, the Romanesque tradition and the simplicity of elements and, on the other hand, innovative choices and decorative richness that saw ancient models in the light of a marked taste for rarity. In this debate, the building of Santa Maria delle Grazie fell into the tradition of Lombard masters, in a recollection of Romanesque structures and spaces, with the intention to work at an expressive language opposite to the novelties introduced by the Tuscans. The Corinthian capitals were the only concession to the Tuscan taste. Guiniforte Solari was able to conscientiously treat all the structural and decorative elements that are typical of the ancient architectural mendicant tradition – Dominican in particular – known as the “hall church”. What the church testifies today is the intention to create a unitary architecture able to delineate an enveloping, deep and extended space, immediately readable.

Of Celtic origin, after being the capital of the Western Roman Empire and centre of Medieval Christian Europe, Milan lived a period of glory as a free city-republic between the 11^th and the 13^th centuries.  Afterwards, with the rise to power and domination of the Visconti family another period started, equally interesting in historical and cultural terms. In the Renaissance, the Visconti signoria at first and the Sforza dukedom later led to Milan’s maximum expansion in political terms and maximum expressive strength in terms of art and culture. The French and Spanish dominion followed the end of that period. Important works of the greatest artistic and architectural value were realized under the most famous exponent of the Visconti family, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Prince of Pavia and later Duke of Milan. It was Gian Galeazzo who started the building of the Certosa di Pavia, officially begun in 1396, and the Milan Cathedral, begun in 1386-1387. In 1450, nine years after the marriage with Bianca Maria Visconti and following civil commotion that brought Francesco Sforza into power and the Sforza family in charge of the city, the years of one of the most glorious Italian signorias started, leaving an artistic heritage of excellence to the city and the whole world. It was especially under Ludovico Maria Sforza, nicknamed the Moor, that humanistic and renaissance values reached their peak, as a result of the ambitious personality of the new duke and his love for art, letters and science. A great patron of the arts, duke of Milan in the period 1480-1499, he attracted to his court figures such as Donato Bramante and the immense Leonardo da Vinci. These personalities brought generous doses of humanism to the city artistic and cultural life and made Milan one of the symbols of the Renaissance, working in an enlightened exchange of prestige, magnificence and refinement.

Sources tell that Bramante built the wide refectory; while Donato of Montorfano was completing his Crucifixion on the south wall, the architect was thinking about the position of the windows so that the north wall, intended for Leonardo’s work, could receive proper lighting.

The Last Supper renewed the traditional subject of Jesus’ last supper codified by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Giorgio Vasari promoted its popularity, making it an object of admiration by artists from the very beginning. Other famous names related to the Last Supper are Federico Borromeo, Goethe and Gabriele d’Annunzio.

During his visit to Milan (1515), the King of France Louis II wished to remove the Last Supper from its original place, but the idea was immediately abandoned as impossible to realize without destroying the work. The same idea was proposed at the beginning of the 19^th century on the initiative of neoclassical painter Andrea Appiani, but it was not realized. A few years later, painter and restorer Stefano Barezzi proposed a new attempt. Barezzi invented a special method to remove frescoes – the so-called peeling technique – and transfer them on wooden panels: he succeeded in removing (1821-22) with good results a 16^th century cycles of frescoes by Bernardo Luini in Villa La Pelucca (Monza) to preserve them at the Pinacoteca di Brera where they are still kept. However, the removal was not carried out and Barezzi was given the task of restoring the Last Supper colours; later on, he was appointed official keeper of the fresco and carried out interventions aimed at improving the refectory conditions in order to insulate Leonardo’s work against humidity and protect it from saltpetre.

The Last Supper was painted by using a technique other than that used in traditional frescoes – the so-called “good fresco” method, which required a rapid execution to complete colour laying before the plaster was dried; this ensured the duration of the painting. On the contrary, in the Last Supper Leonardo applied tempera mixed with oil on a two-layered surface of plaster. This allowed the artist to obtain more refined light and shade effects and touch up and modify the work day after day based on his successive changes of mind; however, the fresco turned out to be much more vulnerable to damage precisely for this reason.

Last heir of the Visconti family, Bianca Maria was betrothed to Francesco Sforza at five years old. She lived until 17 years old at the Castle of Abbiate, which her father considered a safe place for the future Lady of Milan, and was given refined humanistic education, growing in a context of great cultural openness.  At 17 years old, in 1441, she sumptuously married Francesco Sforza and it is said that the famous sweet known as “torrone” (nougat) was created on the occasion of her wedding, inspired by the Tower of Cremona, the town from which Bianca Maria came from.  Duchess from 1450, often in Milan when her husband was engaged in military operations, Bianca Maria cleverly dealt with administrative and diplomatic as well as daily life issues, as proven by her wide correspondence with Francesco Sforza, part of which is kept at the Archivio di Stato in Milan. Ludovico the Moor was Bianca Maria’s fourth child.

The Solari, a family from the Canton Ticino in Switzerland, had a long familiar tradition of architects, at the peak of their fame between the 15^th and 16^th centuries, and left several works of excellence in the Lombard Renaissance. Members of the Solari family worked for the most prestigious buildings in the Dukedom of Milan. Giovanni was a ducal architect and engineer from 1450, supervised the building of the Certosa di Pavia between 1428 and 1462 and was chief engineer for the Cathedral of Milan between 1452 and 1479. His sons, Guiniforte and Francesco, followed in their father’s footsteps, were ducal engineers too and were able to mix Lombard traditions with Renaissance innovation. Guiniforte (or Boniforte) worked at his father’s building sites, in Pavia from 1462 and in Milan from 1470. Guiniforte’s son, Pietro Antonio, architect and sculptor, worked from 1488 in Moscow at the Kremlin walls and was granted the title of Grand Duke of the Moskva River. The cover of the tomb of Ludovico the Moor and his wife Beatrice d’Este by Cristoforo Solari in the Certosa di Pavia is well-known. The work had been initially conceived and ordered by Ludovico to be placed in the Bramante area of Santa Maria delle Grazie, with the intention of converting the tribune into his and his family’s tomb, but the project was interrupted by political events.

He was a universally recognized talent, a genius of the Renaissance and of all times, an Italian artist, engineer and scientist of immense intellectual quality. He devoted himself to several fields of knowledge, thinking, studying, drawing, inventing and making masterpieces – including the world-famous Gioconda, today at the Louvre in Paris, and the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan – and scientific contributions in anatomy, physiology, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, botanic, geology, hydraulics, aerodynamics, mechanics, optics and zoology.   Leonardo studied in Florence at the studio of the famous Andrea del Verrocchio, lived in Milan at the invitation of Ludovico Sforza from 1482 until the city was occupied by the French and Leonardo set out on several journeys and visited courts and capitals. In his first stay in Milan, he dealt with, among other things, designs of military machines and stage designs and sceneries for the court stage shows. He went back to Milan for a second time and finally moved to France at the court of Francis I. Leonardo left fragmentary written traces of his intellectual work, the most considerable and important of which is the collection of the Atlantic Codex kept at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and consisting of 1119 papers related to the period 1478-1519, including sketches, drawings, studies, philosophical thoughts, researches and designs. His wide work left a mark in the history of mankind.

He was an architect, painter and theorist of architecture. Bramante probably studied in Urbino but reached the peak of his career in Milan at the court of Ludovico the Moor. He worked also in Rome at the new building site of Saint Peter’s and Palazzo Vaticano, as well as on other projects ordered by Pope Julius II.  Bramante’s work had strong and significant influence in the art of his period and is evidence of the Humanistic taste for the distribution of architectural volumes in a sort of rhythm provided with colour, refinement and space.

Duke of Milan, son of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza. He had the formidable task of being in power when the Italian territories were constantly at war and exposed to the risk of being subjugated by French expansionism.  Ludovico was effectively the regent of the Dukedom from 1480, though he was formally appointed Duke only when Gian Galeazzo died (1494).  His period was characterized by military operations aimed at seizing and keeping power, but also by enlightened cultural openness of which Ludovico was the author as a great patron and lover of the arts and culture, together with his wife Beatrice d’Este, daughter of Ercole I d’Este from Ferrara, who brought her taste for art and elegance to the Sforza court.

“Ogni nostra cognizione prencipia da sentimenti”

Leonardo da Vinci, Aforismi

“Dell’error di quelli che usano la pratica sanza scientia. Quelli che s’innamoran di pratica sanza scienzia, son come’l nocchieri ch’entra in navilio sanza timone o bussola, che mai ha certezza dove si vada”.

Leonardo da Vinci, Aforismi

“Il giovane deve prima imparare prospettiva; poi le misure d’ogni cosa; poi di mano di buon maestro, per

assuefarsi a buone membra; poi dal naturale, per confermarsi la ragione delle cose imparate; poi vedere un tempo le opere di mano di diversi maestri; poi far abito a mettere in pratica ed operare l’arte”

Leonardo da Vinci, Della pittura

“Tu, pittore, per essere universale e piacere a’ diversi giudizi, farai in un medesimo componimento che vi siano cose di grande oscurità e di gran dolcezza di ombre, facendo però note le cause di tali ombre e dolcezze”.

Leonardo da Vinci, Della pittura

“Rappresenta questa pittura il Redentore divino in quel punto in cui nell’ultima cena dice agli Apostoli che uno infra di loro lo avrebbe tradito. […] La grandiosità del disegno, la distribuzione delle figure, l’espression degli affetti in tutti i personaggi rappresentati è qualcosa di grande. […]  Il volto [ndr del Salvatore] è dolcemente maestoso, gli occhi abbassati in maniera di chi dice cosa, cui dispiace il dirla, e le mani appoggiate sopra la tavola; ma con un certo inarcamento delle dita della destra segnatamente, come di chi trattando un affare di rilievo, accompagna col gesto della mano il sentimento delle parole”.

Domenico Pino, Storia genuina del cenacolo insigne dipinto da Leonardo da Vinci, nel refettorio de’ padri domenicani di Santa Maria delle Grazie di Milano, Milano, 1796

The Florentine origin of Leonardo’s family marked the start of his career as a many-sided artist who, after winning fame, lived in the major Italian centres of the Renaissance. Leonardo spent in Florence the period of his youth and apprenticeship at the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio (from 1469). From 1472, Leonardo is documented in the papers of the Compagnia dei Pittori of Florence and his first works and commissions for decorations of court jousts and feasts date back to those years. In 1480, he seems to be in Lorenzo de’Medici employ but moved to Milan two years later and stayed there until 1500.

In the Renaissance, Ferrara and Milan were bounded by political alliances, strengthened by the marriages between Anna Maria Sforza and Alfonso I d’Este and Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d’Este. The marriage of Anna Maria and Alfonso, heir of Ercole I d’Este – Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio – did not give children and lasted only six years because Anna Maria died in childbirth in 1497. Beatrice d’Este (1475 –1497), daughter of Ercole I d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona, played a leading role at the Milanese court, though for a short time since she also died in childbirth at 22 years old. Beatrice married Ludovico Sforza, nicknamed the Moor, in 1491 and became Duchess of Milan (1494). Sources of the period describe her as a great lady, elegant, intelligent and passionately fond of fashion, travels and art; very attached to her sister Isabella, she used to ask ambassadors visiting the court to describe the dresses of European princesses. She was able to give her husband support both in political occurrences and the relationships with artists whom she was in contact with thanks to Ludovico’s refined patronage. Beatrice and Ludovico’s relationship was very good and based on mutual help and love; at her untimely death, Ludovico was deeply afflicted, as testified also by Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, XLII, 91). Beatrice’s funeral service was held at Santa Maria delle Grazie and Ludovico publicly expressed his wish to be buried beside her – today their tombstones are in the Certosa di Pavia side by side.

Il Genio e le Passioni. Leonardo e il Cenacolo. Precedenti, innovazioni, riflessi di un capolavoro, a cura di P.C. Marani, prefazione di E.H. Gombrich, Skira, Milano 2001

Lezione sul Cenacolo di Leonardo Da Vinci, tenuta da Dario Fo nel cortile della Pinacoteca di Brera a Milano il 27 maggio 1999; a cura di F. Rame con la collaborazione di S. Natale, San Lazzaro di Savena, Nuovi Mondi edizioni, 2001

G. Bossi, Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci: libri quattro, ristampa anastatica, Milano, Skira, 2009

A. Bruschi, Bramante, Roma, Laterza, 1985

J.W. Goethe, Il cenacolo di Leonardo, tr. it. C. Groff, con uno scritto di M. Carminati, Milano, Abscondita, 2004

M. Magnano, Leonardo, Milano, Electa, 2007

P.C. Marani, R. Cecchi, G. Mulazzani, Il Cenacolo e Santa Maria delle Grazie, Electa, Milano, 1986

A.M. Romanini, Le chiese a sala nell’architettura gotica lombarda, Arte lombarda, anno III, II, 1958

whc.unesco.org/en/list/93

www.lombardiabeniculturali.it

www.milanocastello.it

The building of Santa Maria delle Grazie started in 1463 after the donation of the land by Count Gaspare Vimercati, General Commander of the Sforza troops. The actual complex is the result of two main stages: a first “solariana” stage, i.e. based on the design of the famous architect Guiniforte Solari, former chief engineer at the Duomo and the Certosa di Pavia building sites, and a second stage between 1480 and 1497.  The two moments were characterized by different architectural and stylistic choices. In the first stage, works were carried out in harmony with Lombard models with a recovery of the Romanesque style. In a second stage, starting from 1480, works were carried out on the façade with the building of the portal and, in an increasingly radical manner, the review and partial demolition of Solari’s church. In 1492, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, gave Donato Bramante, considered one of the most refined architects in Italy at the time, the task of working on the unfinished building, with the purpose of enlarging it and placing his and his spouse’s remains inside and based on Renaissance values.

Inside the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a treasure of art, the work that, maybe with a few others, represents the core of humanistic art and, at the same time, the programmatic manifesto of Leonardo. In the western wing of one of the three cloisters, the Cloister of the Dead, is the Refectory, known for the presence of the Last Supper: the fresco representing Jesus with the Apostles at the last supper was painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1494 and 1498. According to Leonardo, it is very important to represent “feelings”. Indeed, in his Treatise on Painting he wrote that a good painter must represent not only the exterior appearance of human beings but also their thoughts and emotions. And thoughts and emotions must be painted through the movements of the body. Therefore, Leonardo decided to represent the moment immediately following Jesus’ words “One of you will betray me“. It is the most dramatic moment of the supper: each apostle asks himself and the others who can be the traitor. Leonardo focused on the effect of Jesus’ words on the apostles and their reaction.

The following passage is from a collection of works by Matteo Bandello (1485-1561), a religious, man of letters and courtier who wrote his Novelle telling real events and legendary or curious anecdotes about famous figures of his time. The text illustrates Leonardo’s creative process when the artist was working on the Last Supper.

« He used to […] mount on the scaffolding early in the morning because the last supper is quite high above the ground; he used to paint from the sunrise to the sunset, forgetting even to eat and drink. Then, he would not painted at all for two, three or four days, though spent one or two hours looking at, reviewing and judging the figures. I saw him also, following his own whim, at twelve noon, when the Sun is high, leave Corte Vecchia, where he was creating that wonderful earthen horse, and go to the Grazie and, mounting on the scaffolding, take the paintbrush and put one or two strokes on one of the figures and usually go away».

Matteo Bandello, Novella LVIII, 1497

(See Matteo Bandello, Novelle, edited by E. Menetti, Rizzoli, Milan, 2011)

The drawing can be considered the symbol of the Modern Age in western culture; it was made by Leonardo in the last decade of the 15^th century and, therefore, is coeval with the discovery of America – 1492, an epoch-making date. A naked man with open arms into a circle had been already used in medieval codices to represent the link between the microcosm (man) and the macrocosm (the universe). The ancient meaning is respected by Leonardo’s genius but taken towards a revolutionary direction, leading to the idea of the centrality of man as a wonderful, prodigious and mathematically harmonic machine. However, Leonardo’s drawing shows the man at the centre of a circle and a square based on the indications of Vitruvius, an architect of ancient Rome, who identified in it the ideal measures of man to be used for designing his buildings.  Leonardo drew inspiration from Vitruvius’ texts and concretized them into his drawing to give a model of both aesthetic harmony and scientific details and allow artists to correctly reproduce the human figure. Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man appears on one-euro coins.

Of Celtic origin, after being the capital of the Western Roman Empire and centre of Medieval Christian Europe, Milan lived a period of glory as a free city-republic between the 11^th and the 13^th centuries. Afterwards, with the rise to power and domination of the Visconti family another period started, equally interesting in historical and cultural terms. In the Renaissance, the Visconti signoria at first and the Sforza dukedom later led to Milan’s maximum expansion in political terms and maximum expressive strength in terms of art and culture. The French and Spanish dominion followed the end of that period.

Sources tell that Bramante built the wide refectory; while Donato of Montorfano was completing his Crucifixion on the south wall, the architect was thinking about the position of the windows so that the north wall, intended for Leonardo’s work, could receive proper lighting.

During his visit to Milan (1515), the King of France Louis II wished to remove the Last Supper from its original place, but the idea was immediately abandoned as impossible to realize without destroying the work. The same idea was proposed at the beginning of the 19^th century on the initiative of neoclassical painter Andrea Appiani, but it was not realized. A few years later, painter and restorer Stefano Barezzi proposed a new attempt. Barezzi invented a special method to remove frescoes – the so-called peeling technique – and transfer them on wooden panels. However, the removal was not carried out and Barezzi was given the task of restoring the Last Supper colours; later on, he was appointed official keeper of the fresco and carried out interventions aimed at improving the refectory conditions in order to insulate Leonardo’s work against humidity and protect it from saltpetre.

The Last Supper was painted by using a technique other than that used in traditional frescoes – the so-called “good fresco” method, which required a rapid execution to complete colour laying before the plaster was dried; this ensured the duration of the painting. On the contrary, in the Last Supper Leonardo applied tempera mixed with oil on a two-layered surface of plaster. This allowed the artist to obtain more refined light and shade effects and touch up and modify the work day after day based on his successive changes of mind; however, the fresco turned out to be much more vulnerable to damage precisely for this reason.

He was a universally recognized talent, a genius of the Renaissance and of all times, an Italian artist, engineer and scientist of immense intellectual quality. He devoted himself to several fields of knowledge, studying, drawing and inventing eternal masterpieces – including the world-famous Gioconda, today at the Louvre in Paris, and the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan – and scientific contributions in anatomy, physiology, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, botanic, geology, hydraulics, aerodynamics, mechanics, optics and zoology. Leonardo studied in Florence at the studio of the famous Andrea del Verrocchio, lived in Milan at the invitation of Ludovico Sforza from 1482 until the city was occupied by the French and Leonardo set out on several journeys and visited courts and capitals. Leonardo left fragmentary written traces of his intellectual work, the most considerable and important of which is the collection of the Atlantic Codex kept at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and consisting of 1119 papers related to the period 1478-1519, including drawings, philosophical thoughts, researches and designs.

He was an architect, painter and theorist of architecture of the Renaissance. Bramante studied in Urbino but reached the peak of his career in Milan at the court of Ludovico the Moor. He worked also in Rome at the new building site of Saint Peter’s and Palazzo Vaticano, as well as on other projects ordered by Pope Julius II.

Duke of Milan, son of Bianca Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza. He had the formidable task of being in power when the Italian territories were constantly at war and exposed to the risk of being subjugated by French expansionism. Ludovico was effectively the regent of the Dukedom from 1480, though he was formally appointed Duke only when Gian Galeazzo died (1494). His period was characterized by military operations, but also by enlightened cultural openness, because Ludovico was a great patron and lover of the arts and culture, together with his wife Beatrice d’Este, daughter of Ercole I d’Este from Ferrara.

The Florentine origin of Leonardo’s family marked the start of his career as a many-sided artist who, after winning fame, lived in the major Italian centres of the Renaissance. Leonardo spent in Florence the period of his youth and apprenticeship at the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio (from 1469). From 1472, Leonardo is documented in the papers of the Compagnia dei Pittori of Florence and his first works and commissions for decorations of court jousts and feasts date back to those years. In 1480, he seems to be in Lorenzo de’Medici employ but moved to Milan two years later and stayed there until 1500.

In the Renaissance, Ferrara and Milan were bounded by political alliances, strengthened by the marriages between Anna Maria Sforza and Alfonso I d’Este and Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d’Este. The marriage of Anna Maria and Alfonso, heir of Ercole I d’Este – Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio – did not give children and lasted only six years because Anna Maria died in childbirth in 1497. Beatrice d’Este (1475 –1497), daughter of Ercole I d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona, played a leading role at the Milanese court, though for a short time since she also died in childbirth at 22 years old. Beatrice married Ludovico Sforza, nicknamed the Moor, in 1491 and became Duchess of Milan (1494). Sources of the period describe her as a great lady, elegant, intelligent and passionately fond of fashion, travels and art; very attached to her sister Isabella, she used to ask ambassadors visiting the court to describe the dresses of European princesses. She was able to give her husband support both in political occurrences and the relationships with artists whom she was in contact with thanks to Ludovico’s refined patronage. Beatrice and Ludovico’s relationship was very good and based on mutual help and love; at her untimely death, Ludovico was deeply afflicted, as testified also by Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, XLII, 91). Beatrice’s funeral service was held at Santa Maria delle Grazie and Ludovico publicly expressed his wish to be buried beside her – today their tombstones are in the Certosa di Pavia side by side.

Refectory, the room used for communal meals in buildings where a religious or lay community lives (monasteries, barracks, schools, colleges, convents).

Complex, an architectural complex is a group of elements that constitute a unitary structure.

Programmatic manifesto, a “programmatic manifesto” is a document or a work of various kind  – textual, pictorial, musical, etc. – that states the intentions of an artist or who has an ideal to realize. In this context, it means that Leonardo’s work has all the characteristics necessary to represent his artistic vision.

Sensorial, related to the five senses, the perceptions of the senses and, therefore, the experiences acquired through the same.

Expansionism, the intention of a state to expand in the territories of other countries by war or diplomacy: extending its political borders, establishing economic control and imposing its cultural influence.

Coeval, said of two contemporaneous events, belonging to the same moment.

Epoch-making, characterizing a whole historical period and being a symbol of it.

Legitimated, made official and politically acceptable also in the eyes of the whole community.

Peeling technique, the fresco painting layer is removed without the plaster layer below. It requires the application on the fresco surface of thin and resistant canvasses bound to the painting layer by reversible glues that do not damage it.  When the canvasses are detached from the wall, the fresco remains attached to them: this operation is particularly difficult. The removal of a fresco is a complex and particularly invasive operation, therefore this technique is used only when there are no other possibilities or the fresco support is too damaged.