greet on the terms of the debate which coming up next on t.w. the search for the last to suffer we have that documentary in just a few minutes thank you for watching t.v. . be a. blessed

supper by leonardo da vinci when it was first shown in fourteen ninety nine he created shock waves through italy and beyond changing the world of art for ever but a twenty year restoration effort has revealed view awful truth of the original fresco only some twenty percent is still visible simply put we can no longer seen or understand why this painting had such a devastating impact. or can we. this is the incredible story of a hope across europe following a trail of clues and documents hidden for centuries that suggests that label or joe

and his workshop painted another less. such a huge life size can't see but none other than the king of france does that painting still exist if so can it reveal the secrets of the original fresco. this is where a story starts in milan the most important fashion in business city in all of modern italy and in that sense not much has changed even in the fifteenth century milan was a bustling city filled with artists and musicians. of all the city states and italy the duchy of milan was the most powerful the most exuberant and the wealthiest buy for no wonder that many kings in europe wanted to conquer it. to

caylee because the man in charge the juke named little because for tips it was a tyrant who had ceased power in fourteen he was and many other such rulers he was desperate to cloak use illegitimacy with the splendor of a renaissance court. the judge had many projects a monastery complex called it just tolls on the pa via a new church building right here in milan called the sometime audi about agazzi but the biggest project of all was this massive cathedral deliberately designed to be the biggest church building in all of italy so naturally the city was a magnet for young artists and sculptors from all over the region. but why leonardo this artist wasn't from lombardy he was from florence the most exciting city in all of italy a wellspring of the renaissance what was he doing painting at fresco. and milan.

answer may be found in a small village outside of florence called vincent. leonardo was a natural child the son of a farmer's daughter katherina one day had a role in the hay with a promising young notary called seven pm of course mary's was out of the question a bright future awaited said provided he married a wife from a prestigious family. that's why leonardo was never truly part of the creative circles of florence around lorenzo the meeting with artists like the betty gillan diet or michelangelo these were folks who wrote latin sonnets and could hold their own in fine society there or not it was never part of that.

but said piero never forgot his son and was only his ready to use his connections to help him get work but the lack of a proper education left young leonardo at a major disadvantage. instead he was apprenticed to the workshop of one of the most prolific artists of florence and that i am here here leonardo learned how to mix pigments prepare panels or transfer a large fresco drawings called cartoons to a plaster wall. and eventually for allowed him to paint one of the angels in his panel of the baptism of cries it's obvious that leonardo's angel is much more beautiful than the rather die our angel to the right painted by photo kill himself . so how did he create such lovely and gelug faces the answer

by using a new invention called or oils whereas most of florence still use the flat collars of tempera paint which dries quickly leonardo had begun to experiment with pigments mixed with oils the technique first developed in northern europe. day adventists oil prices i temporized that in order to create a three dimensional object you pretty much have to mix every single color that you put in there or crosshatch it so you get the feeling that we don't mention the word or oil you didn't have that problem you have an incredible range from black to white almost seamlessly and sold this was a huge shift for for the artists and the renaissance. amir is a classically trained artist who painted a live size re creation of the sistine chapel for the motion picture angels and the

. and how where these oils may. well they were ground up pigments they could be anything from bones to dry possibly to accost famous only a blue that came from uk honest on that was so expensive that it cost more than actual gold and its own weight my god more than gold has it that. the fifteenth century to quote read cento was a an exciting time to be in florence it was a time of rebirth the renaissance the revival of the ancient world and the arts and science in literature and in engineering here for example filippo brunelleschi used roman engineering to create this vast dome over the dew moment the cathedral of florence while burlesque he was taking measurements of ancient temples in rome he had discovered that when you draw as street or

a building all the horizontal lines seem to converge to a common center what today we call the vanishing point. rule esky have discovered the laws of linear perspective it revolutionized the renaissance art suddenly painters could create an illusion of three dimensional space this if the image they painted was a window on another world. you know for us it's almost impossible to imagine the impact of this innovation why because today we are surrounded by simulated images are full of billboards television cinema they have conditioned our brain to interpret flat images as three dimensional reality but in the middle ages men and women never had that experience before and so they must have been utterly amazed. by

a painting like this one. the crucifixion by massaging the first fresco in history to use linear perspective. people in those days was a part of us some form of magic to see space rather was only a flat wall. there no no was also trained in the magic of linear perspective in the workshop of his master of iraq and he too was amazed by the possibilities but as he began his first major painting they are not i realized that linear perspective had one major drawback. it tended to see by fall the figures and inhibit their expressive power in many paintings the figures became like puppets fixed on a rigid grid ten years later leonardo would write how to give you figures are

pleasing in their. look about you. when you see a beautiful face remember its features and fix them in your mind. so what layer naruto is saying is don't let geometry deprive your characters of feelings of emotions of psychological drama and the first bold attempt to do just that is a painting that hangs right here in the you feeds it called the adoration of the magic. unfortunately the monks who commissioned the panel weren't interested in moving the boundaries of italian art they simply wanted a pretty picture of the native any that people could recognize and worship. and so the work was stopped and the painting remained unfinished it would take nearly two decades before layer nardo group realize his great vision he talked about wanting

to create his work of fame you can see but unless he's work of fame you could see donna tell us works of fame and he wanted to create his own and so his destiny he felt lay with a large a large court with a grand patron and a single person who was going to be writing the checks and that happened to be at the most powerful man in italy many the fourteen eighties and for the ninety's was the duke of milan lot of equals fortson and so that's why he went north in fourteen eighty two to begin working for someone who was in effect a prince and not just a group of monks that's why a layman are decided to turn his back on the forums and that's why he came here in milan filled with ambition not as an artist but as an engineer a military and it is he even prepared an impressive picture for the job at

cataloguing all of us military talents. methods for destroying every fortress or strong and is built on a rock. i can also design different types of can which one from the stones and ball like a hail storm. leonardo's hopes came to naught it took several years for a joke ludovico to finally notice the florentine artist but the project he gave him a huge equestrian statue ended in failure the only thing that remains of this massive project are his studies. live in arthur was ready to tackle the greatest most ambitious. composition of his young career a series of thirteen live sized portraits of men seated at a table for

a wall in milan. how did the last supper project come about and who asked leonardo de painted. this may come as a surprise but you really don't know what you need to know is that the jokes for tended to favor home grown artists like giovanna don't want to follow that may not have been particularly in maginot but they delivered their work on time and on budget like this fresco of st peter martyr. what we do know is that the job had chosen this church to become the pantheon of his dynasty. actually it was part of a dominican convent and the abbot white away saw as opportunity so he asked the joke if he would build him a new or factory place to have meals for the monks complete with frescos.

a refectory was usually decorated with two paintings a last supper and a crucifixion of christ. the last supper illustrated the institution of the eucharist whereas the crucifixion depicted the redemption of mankind to the suffering of jesus the two counter-points of christian theology the the most important for us go destined for the south wall was the crucifixion of christ this did you gave to giovanni dum want to fun know whose family had been working in the cathedral of milan for many decades. a. little of that who was going to paint a north wall. lane out of the vinci up to this point laid out or had done other

than the failed question project in the two small portraits was the production of plays and masks for the entertainment of the jew can escort. was he truly going to be given this monumental fresco but laid out of was in effect a special effects man for they do can so i i guess we would think of him as a sort of a combination set designer costume designer and special effects person for these spectacular is that a lot of eco would have staged maybe a couple of times a year in the lion. that is why lunardi it was determined that with this fresco he was going to stomach the moment. and they probably would have been expecting that he would have done a last supper akin to all of those that have been done primarily in florence in tuscany sienna for the previous two hundred years but of course he did something

quite different that archetype showed christ breaking bread thus establishing the first eucharist but like a skilled film director leonardo picked a far more dramatic see the moment when jesus the claire's that one of the men in the room is a traitor. that news literally explodes from the center and hits the apostles and various poses of shock disbelief sorrow even anger the full panoply of human emotions is laid bare the same idea that had galvanized his adoration of the manager some twenty five years earlier. in order wanted action and he also wanted the emotion and the dramatic intensity of what happened in in those seconds in jerusalem and that of course is one of the magnificent things

about the painting he brings that to life and we see that and instantly i think we can understand what's happening there is that hold for techs of human drama that's right where everyone is reacts. differently the rasping each other there's even credulity there's disbelief there's anger there is in the cases i'm like st john he just appears to be coming awake and there's being interrogated by st peter and so he does he takes each in each of these twelve and gives them. some characteristics some you know a facial expression a hand gestures things like that in order to take us into the character but here is the great tragedy most of these beautiful expressions are no longer visible today in a sentimental as now it. is often the president has an emotional he wanted to trick upon a technique because you had an end up the town and add enough to ask book next question the next plotted out was not as you want to said spy don't add on to sender and.

unlike months of fun or who used conventional fresco techniques leonardo could not resist experimenting with his pick means to try to create the same optical effects that he had pioneered with his oil paintings the result was catastrophic i think the thing that's so interesting about him is that he's got different intellectual interests and so he's trying to achieve different goals with paint but he's asking different questions of them larry keith is the head of conservation and keeper at london's national gallery but also i think he really was interested in exploring. nuances of total british and all those kinds of distinctions that i think are really not possible to achieve.

in fifteen seventeen influential cardinal named luigi dot argonne and his secretary and tonio debbie optus went on a tour and among others visited the convent in milan to see the last supper. as to be out this week bright it is most excellent although it is beginning to decay either because of the down in the sun the wall some other form of neglect. in the centuries since the first go continued to deteriorate because it was adjoining a kitchen so all the moisture was trapped in the wall. in the end there is really no way to know what leonardi great masterpiece looked like. or is there. long before and tony owes a visit another even more distinguished visitor came to milan with an army into

this was the newly crowned king of france louis to twelve just one year after his elevation to the king marched on malone to claim the city as this old. and what was the first thing that king louis did after he set himself up here and his fellows for thought the answer is in the book written by lay on our toes first biographer george of us are. as for sorry says the king when on a visit he went to see the last supper. the kid was deeply pressed by the excellence of this picture both in composition and execution and convinced that he should take it back to his king so he tried to find hawker techs who could build a framework of wood and i am to safely transport the fresco back to france with no

regard for expense so much to he want to have it. but since it was painted a war his majesty could not have his design. but kings aren't used to being told what they cannot have and so louis decided on an even bigger gamble but for that he needed léonard of himself at least that's our theory. even though leonardo was in milan he was wanted back in florence to finish another first go to battle of and beyond and the whole of the five hundred of the lots of donna senorita so he wasn't in a position to stay in milan and do whatever the king had in mind for him but then something extraordinary something that changed everything. this is the arcadia adela's thought of the feet hands of the state archives of

florence with documents that go back over a thousand years and here we found a truly remarkable letter which they left out the elite you think although they chase him up. an idiot if you didn't fit in yeah dorothy she gently najar me little question to say it then here is a letter from the french king himself king louis to twelfth to the gun following year to the president of the french republic to see or we are asking as we have need of must. pay into the city of florence and want to make him do something by his own hand we beg you to kindly let it all work for us for a period of time and carry out the work we tend to do. i think it's becoming clear what the french king once lived in order to do if he can have their first school itself he will have the next best thing

a copy on canvas that he can take back to france. and what's interesting about is that the king doesn't tell the senior ia what he would like him to do he is very cagey about the king doesn't say how long because if our theory is correct and he wants leonardo to make a copy of the last supper that would take. a very long time indeed. the idea of such a live size copy was not far fetched leonardo was arguably one of the first painters in history who used his studio to make copies of his own works for sale such as divergent of the rocks painted with his associate umbrella judith pretties . the madonna of the yarn winder possibly painted with this pupil francesco spaniel

a saint and painted with his assistant mel c. and of course the mona lisa painted by his pupil and close companion sala. and was a good reason for that here in the sometime early in a land that i had a large studio with lots of assistance but he worked very slowly and it's difficult to maintain a large studio when you have a very limited output but it's not so hard if you use your best assistants to make copies of your works for sale under the master's supervision of course so what happened to this copy of the last supper who painted it and as a still exist. there's only one way to find out and that is to go to france.

today we think of paris as the world's epicentral for our culture and fashion this is where the world kongs for beauty and refinement but in the sixteenth century things were very different. people sometimes forget that but in the middle ages it was actually burgundy. which dictated french culture not just an art but also in poetry and music and then came the scourge of the black plague and the hundred years war in which joan of arc would play such an important part. somebody in time i mean a twelfth came to the throne france was

a mere shadow of its former self and louis was very much aware that. he knew that french artists needed to take their cue from the italian renaissance. and i think that's why he was so incredibly keen to get the last supper into france . but if that's true and if a lot of sides copy of the last supper was actually made where did it go the answer i think maybe hidden behind these walls this is the shock to the guy you know which ones served as the residents of georgia done was. done well as well. the most important member besides of a king with a twelve or sort of prime minister we can underline the fact that he was us both with us dick cheney hard. like his master dumb ones was deeply smitten

with the beauty of italian art he decided he wanted to build a shack told there was entirely in the renaissance time the first one in france and so he brought back scores of italian artists and masons to do just that. but it's not enough to just let him go to school and just unfold some. folk fantasy flight and russell. and various like. the people of new going to the beach he came here yeah and what did he do to do lots of things to decrement yourself in one of the most beautiful of the cities and to reinforce. the fact that. one of leonardo's leading pupils was working in this chateau around fifteen zero nine may be the missing piece of the puzzle. unfortunately the chapel and much of the shuttle were destroyed in the french

revolution and the turmoil not follow but one work that andrea painted for the shadow still exists the deposition from the cross which today hangs in the. center s.l.r. it what we know of him is that he was from a family of artists we think he was probably working in venice in a period when you know out of his very first in line so he wasn't there with him right from the beginning and around forty nine to five public came back from venice to man with his brother christopher and which is of course exactly the moment when they're not as they getting to work on the last supper for s.k. . if that's true then salerno must have been present as the great fresco of the last supper took shape on the refectory wall and since he was one of léonard o's most talented pupils could he have been the one who painted the copy for the french

king in the archives of the château we find a key piece of evidence an inventory of all property including paintings from the fifteen forty s. one of these paintings is not a sin fact on twilight gone past the knowledge the film will say your feast up of the to be a last supper on canvas with monumental figures which his grace had brought over from alone. could this be our first hard piece of evidence of a live size copy of the last supper. with monumental figures put this together with what we know that andreas alarie was in ngaio in fifteen zero nine and that pieces begin to fall into place. there is little doubt that solari zero was a favorite of the dumb was family and fifteen zero seven even painted

a portrait of george just nephew charlotte dumb ones charlie was none other than the governor of milan at that time but given the short time frame in which the copy was finished between fifteen zero seven fifteen zero nine is likely that not only sold but also other leonardo pupils were involved including for example jump. but here's the next question where is this campus after all if it's as big as we think it is it's not something you would lose very easily. and that's why we find ourselves on the train to antwerp in belgium to follow the next trail of glimpse. we usually think of and for best the city of rubens painter of the baroque but even

in the early renaissance and for it was a very important city primarily because it served as the major port of the low countries. but things started to change in the early sixteenth century primarily as a result of the growing tensions between the protestant north and the catholic south which ultimately produced the eighty years war. this is. when the catholic church look for every which way to defend the faith in the low countries and is founded in this abbey the abbey of total. no what i think is so interesting is that dutch calvinism rejected all forms of religious imagery paintings sculpture even stained glass those old torn down and destroyed i think that's why the abbot of total world decided he should

get the biggest pain to know christ and his apostles he could find to deter the north and give a boost to the catholic faithful in the sun. reportedly this painting is to exist in a small chapel on the grounds of this very calm. oh my god there it is the fear of this the painting we've been looking for all these weeks. it is magnificent. so the painting was brought to bear and just in that specific moment the abbot

of tongue good lord. has asked somebody to look off to the beautiful you'll change great. painting religious painting for the new abbey church he wrote a letter to the abbot. he discussed the last supper of leonardo da vinci that was sold on the second of february in fifty eight hundred forty five it's oh the painting was actually presented and sold. a product of lugano living just painted by leo a lot of the while it was in those days it was not that important but probably. ninety percent of the painting is the work of. the disciples pupil self. tell me about this theory of who painted christ and saying yes well. you know but i've been the. lady who has been restoring for twenty two years the

original fresh calling me londell. as she has she said to distance the work of a good. few people as disciples of da vinci but she said i'm convinced that christ is and especially also the apostle of sin job and your favorite model of that painting has been painted by himself by a layer not of the oh yeah. mine is that it's a chip but it's a quality the quality of you know when you look at a painting you see that thing john this. is very nice and it's exceptional quality and very very about and they also make x. rays of some twenty years ago and there are under good pasta schedule exact

for saint john and christ you're telling me that there are there is an under drawing under all of the apostles yeah except for john and crossed that is painted directly on the campus that was the result of. of the x. rays that is an astonishing discovery. so we might conclude that even though the apostles may have been painted by his pupils in their living perhaps andrea celeriac that lay not to himself painted crisis in the most important figures on the last supper premier yet and that was so it's they both to painting as a work of i think that's fascinating that's fascinating it is a beautiful work but is this the painting that king louis the twelfth ordered from leonardo in fifteen zero seven and that hundred or so laurie you brought to france and fifteen zero nine fortunately the abbey has an extensive archive going back

many hundreds of years and here we find in this polishing eyewitness account. that's for sayings of course hunt and jewel it is said that the painting is made after an original painted on the walls that is now a bad past when the king of france will call good by law so all the painting he was very disappointed that he could not take it with him since it was painted on a wall and so he gave the order to have a copy made and that's the copy that hangs in the choir today so what we have here is an eyewitness document from the sixteenth century that confirms our theory that louis did twelfth order a copy of the last supper from leonardo da vinci and this painting now hangs on the wall of this beautiful abbey in belgium.

but then the plot thickens once more as we saw such a large campus could not have been painted by just one artist in such a small time frame so who would have painted it on the event and various a lhari of the most likely candidate is an italian artist called jump you tina for as we will discover in london he went on to make a second call. for two hundred fifty years the royal academy at burlington house in london this been training generations of british ours by drawing inspiration from the work of the great masters. so we're sitting here in the library which very much for nights to train all the artists feet we're all what we call bacterial throughout instance bottom them to look at when did the world economy acquire the copy of the last

supper and why did they acquire so it was eight hundred twenty one the academy bullshit. six hundred guineas which then was a lot of money as a sort of comparison in eighteen twenty the national gallery bought a real titian for just over three hundred pounds so to spend six hundred pounds on what was a copy was an immense amount of money so they had to gather all the artists together they all had to vote on it and agreed that this was a good purchase it was this extraordinary example of leonardo's work i mean it's a copy i think it was seen as a real window into the sort of achievements of leonardo and to have in the schools for the artist the students to look at was was amazing there's a note by leonardo that refers to a john pepto who we think is probably the same person and we know that a figure more or less of this name is working in milan from at least around fifteen

years seven so in that second period after leonardo has been back to florence and then returned to milan and would you agree that he's probably one of the principal of the crop in the world yes so that's very much the current line of thinking although he has recently going back to the technical drawings underpinning this work and has to do technical analysis of the under drawings of the work has asserted that in fact it's probably all tracking his hand initially and then jump it you know coming in as a secondary hand. if it's true that jump you three know worked on both the tunnel over asia and then later around fifteen twenty on this copy it would seem that between these two playing tunes we would have a very accurate sense of what the original fresco once looked like. and i think the scale of it is it does appear to be very very close to the original

and certainly in heads that we we've come investigate further seem to be very close the original book traffic jam catarina obviously had access to clean out is crawling with cartoon and i think with possibly evidence that there may have been some pretty out or tracing all you know from these original cartoon and say you know this is really interesting that the basis maybe even closer than we originally thought. now that we found not one but two live sized versions of the last supper by layer nano and his top pupils do we have long last have a key to see what the fresco and milan truly looked like. the last supper a painting that would go on to transform the course of western art could anyone in the forty nine haven't dissipated the tremendous impact that this fresco would have

he would have been told by the look of eco and the trier of sentimental look at c. to a last supper and they probably would have expected he would have done the last supper they came to all of those that have been done primarily in florence in tuscany seattle for the previous two hundred years later of course did not work like night and he did say that the way to make a painting was not to look at the paintings it was to look at real life so i think what he wanted to do and why he thought viable was find the drama in the story was almost like he. was the director of a film and he was given a brief this is the film you're going to make we're going to make a film of the last supper leonardo wanted action and he also wanted the emotion and the dramatic intensity of what happened in those seconds in jerusalem and that of course is one of the magnificent things about the painting that he brings that to life and we see that and instantly i think we can understand what's happening there

three paintings and yet one vision a vision of the people doing the most familiar scene from the gospels in a way that had never been done before. and now we know what that original vision once looked like thanks to our canvas and the remote convent involved you of course in the years to come the high renaissance would produce some of the most memorable frescoes in history including raw files and the vatican and michelangelo's immortal ceiling of the sistine chapel but all that incredible realisable that monumental grasp of the human figure first started with a for us to go on the wall of a factory in milan. it's

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this is the news a live from berlin a mixed verdict that could prove troublesome for u.s. president. no collusion with russia but some attempts to influence the course of justice the u.s. government publishes the much anticipated results of the a better education into russian interference in the twenty sixteen presidential election.