what's the big cheese masterpiece original look stay tuned for that i'm going to ask one more news of the top the hour thanks for watching. one organize a party it's a real party because there's no rubbish hanging about everyone writes that only impose on their own cup and then we parted and you know what the great thing is you know and they.

the last supper by leonardo da vinci when it was first shown in fourteen ninety nine it created shock waves through italy and beyond changing the world of art for ever but a twenty year restoration effort has revealed the 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 lead. to . this is the incredible story of a hop across europe following a trail of clues and documents hidden for centuries that suggests that labor bill

and his workshop painted a mother last supper a huge life size kids' school 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 the 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 along with 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 wealthy. it's by far no wonder that many kings in europe wanted to conquer it.

to kill me because the man in charge of the juke named ludovico sforza was a tyrant who had ceased power in fourteen he was than any other such rulers and he was desperate to cloak his illegitimacy with the splendor of a renaissance court. the jew had many projects a monastery complex called it just tours of the pov via a new church building right here in milan called some time out. but the biggest project of all was this massive cathedral deliberately designed to be the biggest church building in all of italy so naturally this city was a magnet for young artists and sculptors from all over the region. but while they are not of 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 in milan.

answer may be found in a small village outside of florence called village. luna two 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 said pierre of course mary's was out of the question a bright future awaited said pietro 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 betty. or michelangelo these were folks who wrote latin sonnets and could hold their own in fine society. they are not i was never part of that.

but said piero never forgot his son and was always 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 very lucky here here leonardo learned how to mix pigments prepare panels or transfer a large fresco drawing scald cartoons to a plaster wall. and eventually for akio allowed him to paint one of the angels in his panel of the baptism of christ it's obvious that leonardo's angel is much more beautiful than the rather darr angel to the right painted by photo peel himself so how did he create such lovely and gelug faces the answer by using

a new invention called 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 all hast severus extemporaneous that in order to create that's three dimensional object you pretty much have to mix everything right single color that you put in there or crosshatch at sea or get the feeling of a dimension but with oil you didn't have that problem you think having a credible range from black to white collar seamlessly and sell this was a huge shift for for the artists and the renaissance. good are a mare is a classically trained artist who painted a life size re creation of the sistine chapel for the motion picture angels and the

. and how were these oils made. well they were ground up pigments that could be anything from bones to dry possibly to accost famous ultimately a beluga came from afghanistan that was so expensive that it cost more than actual gold in its own weight my god more than gold has it that. the fifteenth century to quote the 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 and literature and engineering here for example philippo brunelleschi used roman engineering to create this vast dome over the do moment the cathedral of florence while burlesque he was taking measurements of ancient temples and 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. the less he had discovered the laws of linear perspective it revolutionized the renaissance art suddenly painters could create in the allusion 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 of form 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 thought of as some form of magic to see space weather was only a flat wall. leonardo was also trained in the magic of linear perspective in the workshop of his master of ocular and he too was amazed by the possibilities but as he began his first major painting they are now realised that linear perspective had one major drawback. it tended to stifle 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

appealing air. look about you. when you see a beautiful face remember its features and fix them in your mind. so what layer nardo is saying is don't let geometry deprive your characters of feelings of emotions of psychological drama and the first ball that tends 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 a 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 done finished 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 burlesque his work of fame he could see donna tell us where it's a thing that he wanted to create his own and so his destiny he felt he 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 in the the fourteen eighties and for the ninety's was the duke of milan lot of equals four and so that's why he went north in fourteen eighty two to begin working for a summit was in effect the prince and not just a group of monks that's why a layman are decided to turn his back on the florence 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 even prepared and then press of pitch for the job but

catalogued 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 was from stones and ball like a hail storm. leonardo's hopes came to naught it took several years for a joke little vico to finally noticed a 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 when you really don't know what we need to know is that the jukes for tended to favor home grown artists like giovanna don't want to follow it may not have been particularly in managing a tip but they delivered their work on time and on budget like this fresco of st peter bartter. what we do know is that the joke 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 the 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 condor 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 of fun whose family had been working in the cathedral of milan for many decades. of the all but who was going to paint the north wall. lane out of the vinci up to this point but lay it out or had done other than the failed question project and

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 lane order was in effect a special effects man for the duke and 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 lot of a cord to have staged maybe a couple of times a year in the land. 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 had 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 she uses the climbers that one of the men in the room is a traitor. that noose literally explodes from the center and hits the apostles in 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 leonardo 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 one of the magnificent things about

the painting and 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 react. they're friendly they're asking each other there's evil credulity there's disbelief there's anger there is in the case there's a light st john he just appears to be coming awake and there's being interrogated by st peter and so he does he takes each of each of these twelve and gives them. some characteristics some you know a facial expression 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 but i say metal is not because i've been all kinds of often in the press because of emotional heat on it a trick upon a technique because you had an end up on that at a feist book express you know the next plotted out was not that's still too sad

especially don add an ascended into. unlike want to funnel who used conventional fresco techniques leonardo could not resist experimenting with his pigments to try to create the same optical effects that he a pioneer with his or helping to use 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 and he's asking different questions of them larry keith is the head of conservation and keeper had london's national gallery but also i think he really was interested in exploring. nuances of tonal british and all those kinds of distinctions that i think are really not possible to achieve in fast.

in fifteen seventeen when 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 the b. artists would write. it is most excellent although it is beginning to decay either because of the damp in the sun the wall some other form of clicked. in the centuries since the first go continue to deteriorate because it was adjoining a kitchen so all the moisture was trapped in the wall in the end there's really no way to know what lane are those great masterpiece looked like. or is there. long before until new year's visit another even more distinguished visitor came to

milan with an army into this was the newly crowned king of friends louis twelve just one year after his elevation to the king marched on the lawn to clean the city as his own. and what was the first thing that king louis did after he set himself up here in the castello sports are the answer is in the book written by lay on our toes first biographer george of us our. 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 have to safely transport the fresco back to france with

no regard for expense so much to it he want to have it. but since it was painted on a wall it's majesty could not have his design. but kings aren't used to being told what they cannot have and so he decided on an even bigger gambit but for that he needed leonardo 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 poll also done a security 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 arche view adela's thought of defeat and say the state archives of

florence with documents that go back over a thousand years and here we found a truly remarkable letter with a left at the elysian a thick order to chase him up a lesson yet if you didn't think in the attic with dorothy she jenna religion question to say it then here is a letter from the french king himself king louis to twelve to the gulf alone year to the president of the french republic the signoria asking as we have need of last. she painted to 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 the french 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 it is that the king doesn't tell the senior ria 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 sized copy was not far fetched later nardo 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 little joy to play these . the madonna of the yarn winder possibly painted with his pupil francesco spawn

you will the st n. painted with his assistant mel c. and of course the mona lisa painted by his pupil and close companion sala. there was a good reason for that here in the sometime early in a lot about 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 doesn't 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 epicenter of our culture and fashion this is where the world kongs for beauty and refinement. but in the sixteenth century things for 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 it's one the way the twelfth came to the throne france was

a mere shadow of its former self and louis was very much aware. 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 cell for into french. but if that's true and if alive size copy of the last supper was actually made where did it go the answer i think maybe hidden behind these walls. this is the shot to the guy you know which once served as the resident. of just dumb ones. just i was one of the most important to them besides the king with the twelve are sort of prime minister we can underline the fact that he was us full of. yeah. like his master king louis dumb ones was

deeply smitten with the beauty of italian art he decided he wanted to build a shock to 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. he took an artist went to school like this one also. fell twenty five in the restaurant and various lottery. the pupil of community did she came here yes and what do you do lots of things to degrade yourself a lot of the most beautiful shot of the sixty's and to reinforce. the fact that. one of those 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 term world not follow but one work that andrea painted for the chateau still exists a deposition from the cross which today hangs in duluth. central florida what we know of him is that he was from a family of artists we think he was probably what 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 in public and back from venice to milan with his brother christopher which is of course exactly the moment when the in a daze beginning to work on. 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 those 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 printers from the fifteen forty one of these paintings is no sin fact on twilight zone persona the film will say your feet stop partly to be like a lance supper on canvas with monumental figures which is grace had brought over from alone. could this be our first hard piece of evidence of a live size copy of the last supper on gone past on ours with monumental figures. put this together with what we know that andreas alarie was in guy you know in fifteen zero nine and that pieces begin to fall into place. there is little doubt that solaria was a favorite of the dumb was family and fifteen zero seven he even painted

a portrait of george's nephew charlotte dumb ones charlotte 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 and fifteen zero nine is likely to not only so loudly oh 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 flumes. we usually think of and for prez the city of rubens painter of the baroque but even

in the early renaissance and for was a very important city primarily because it served as the major port of the low countries. the thing 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 looked for every which way to defend to faith in the low countries and founded in this abbey the abbey of total. you. know what i think is so interesting is that dutch calvinism rejected all forms of religious imagery paintings sculpture even stained glass it was all torn down and destroyed i think that's why the abbot of total world decided he should

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

of tongue good little has asked somebody to look off to the beautiful you all should great. painting religious painting for didn't you be church he wrote a letter to the abbot that. he discussed the last supper of leonardo da vinci. 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 living on a living so yes 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 p.o.p.o. self. tell me about this theory of who painted christ and since yes well. you know but i believe. maybe who has been restoring for

twenty two years the original fresco in the londell as she said to this is a work of a group. of your pupils disciples of. but she said i'm convinced that christ is and especially also the apostle of sin john your favorite model of that means he has been painted by himself by a layer not of them yeah. mine is that it's here it's a quality the quality of your when you look at a painting you see that in john this. is very nice and it's exceptional quality and very very about and they also made. some twenty years ago. there are under gag yup austin schedule exact same time on 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 that he says stuff. 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 and living perhaps on various celeriac that lay not to himself painted christ and since the most important figures on the last supper paid yeah yeah and that was so it's they both painting ass a work. that's fascinating that's fantasy it is a beautiful work but is this the painting that king louis de 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 tarnishing eyewitness account. that force a core hunt and jewel it is said that the painting is made after an original painted on a wall that is now a bad past. when the king of france who called good to milan saw all the painting he was very disappointed that he could not take it with him since it was painted a whole 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 twelve order a copy of the last supper from leonardo da vinci and that 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 canvas could not have been painted by just one artist such a small time frame so who would have painted on the bend and various a lhari o. the most likely candidate is an italian artist called jump you team for as we will discover in london he went on to make a second call. for two hundred fifty years the wall academy at burlington house in london this been training generations of british artists by drawing inspiration from the work of the great masters. so we're sitting here in the library which very much relates to the training of the artists these were all what we call bacterial through artists inspire them for 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 for six hundred guineas which then was a lot of money as a sort of comparison in a few twenty the national got a report every hill titian just over three hundred pounds said to spend six hundred pounds on what was a copy with 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 although it's a copy i think it. it's a real window into the sort of achievements of leonardo and to have that in the schools for the artist the students come up with an 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

eighty seven so in that second period after leonardo has been back to florence and has then returned to milan and would you agree that he's probably one of the principal organs from the crop in the world yes so that's very much the current line of thinking although actually moroni has recently going back to the technical drawings underpinning this work and has a few technical analysis of the undercurrents of the work has asserted that in fact it's probably all traffic his hand initially and then jumper trainer 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 paintings we would have a very accurate sense of what the original fresco once looked like. i think the scale of it is it does appear to be very very close to the original and

for me the head that we can investigate further seemed to be very close to regional book traffic and champion train office he had access to leonardo is drawing the cartoon and i think with possibly evidence that there may have been some sort of pushing out all tracing all you know from these original cartoon so you know this is really interesting that the basis maybe even closer than we originally thought. not that we found not one but two live sized versions of the last supper by a layer narrow 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 years have been dissipated the tremendous impact that this fresco

would have he would have been told by the look of eco and the trier of century deliberate see the last supper and they probably would have expected he would have done the last supper akin to all of those that have been done primarily in florence in tuscany scieno for the previous two hundred years but laid out of course did not work like that and he did say that the way to make a painting was not to look at other paintings it was to look at real life and so i think what he wanted to do and why he thought the bible was find the drama in the story was almost like he. was the director of a film that he was given the 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 then he also wanted the emotion and the dramatic intensity of what happens 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 picturing 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 fangs to work 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 stones and the vatican and michelangelo's immortal sealing of the sistine chapel but all that incredible realisable that monumental grasp of the human figure first started with a for us go on the wall of a factory in the long. chopin

for the twenty first century. and you train for an hour and a unique interpretation. a tesla in concert and the world of a young piano. parts twenty one presents danny in a tree for nothing. in thirty minutes on d w.

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. this is the news live from berlin clashes in central paris as yellow best protesters reclaim the spotlight after the fire at notre dame cathedral. made scores of arrests as protesters battled officers and set fires in the french capital it's the twenty third straight weekend of yellow vests demonstrations will go to our correspondent on the scene in paris also coming up the egyptians are voting in a referendum on constitutional amendments that could enable.