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the last supper. living she when it was 1st shown in $1499.00 they created shock waves through italy and beyond changing the world of art for ever but a 20 year restoration effort has revealed the awful truth of the original fresco only some 20 percent is still visible simply put we can no longer seen or understand why this painting had such a devastating impact. or can only. this is the incredible story of a hook across europe following a trail of clues and documents hidden for centuries that suggests that. leyla dough

and his workshop painted another last supper a huge life sized characters 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 and business city in all of modern italy and in that sense love much has changed even in the 15th century milan was a bustling city filled with artists and musicians. of older cities 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. to

keely because the man in charge of the juke named little because for the song was a tyrant who had seized power in 14 he was in many other such rulers he was desperate to cloak his illegitimacy with the splendor of a renaissance court. the juke had many projects a monastery complex called it just tolls on the pa via a new church built right here in milan called the sometime out there 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 while a lot of this artist wasn't from lombardy he was from florence the most exciting city in all of italy a wellspring of the red of. what was he doing painting at fresco in milan.

answer may be found in a small village outside of florence called vinci. leonardo was a natural child the son of a farmer's daughter katherina who one day had a role in the hay with a promising young notary called 7 pm 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 layer nardo was never truly part of the creative circles of florence around lorenzo to manage with artists like the betty gillan diet or michelangelo these were folks who wrote latin sonnets and could hold their own in fine society they're not i was never part of that.

but said piero never forgot his son and was only as 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 unveil 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 cries it's obvious that leonardo's angel is much more beautiful than the rather dour angel to the right painted by frodo kill himself. so how did he create such lovely and jelly faces the answer by using

a new invention called oils or is most of florence still used the flat collars of tempera paint which dries quickly leonardo had begun to experiment with the ignorance mixed with orals the technique 1st developed in northern europe they advanced that's all hast suspect tempera is that in order to create a 3 dimensional object you pretty much have to mix every single color in that you put in there or crosshatch it so you get the feeling of a dimension but with oil you didn't have that problem you can have an incredible range from black to white collar seamlessly and sell this was a huge shift for for the artists and the renaissance. and there 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 orals may. well they were ground up pigments there could be anything from bones to dry parsley to of course famous ultra marine blue that came from afghanistan that was so expensive that it cost more than actual gold and its own weight my god more than gold as it is. the 15th century to quote red chantel 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 science and literature and 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 and rome he had discovered that when you draw it as street or

a building all the horizontal lines seem to converge to a common center what today we call the vanishing point. the leskie had discovered the laws of linear perspective it revolutionized the renaissance art suddenly painters could create an illusion of 3 dimensional space as 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 3 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 massager the 1st fresco in history to use linear perspective. people in those days was a lot of us 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 1st 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 10 years later leonardo would write how to give you figures are

pleasing air. look about you. when you see a beautiful face remember its features and fix them in your mind. so what later naruto is saying is don't let geometry deprive your characters of feelings of emotions of psychological drama and the 1st 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 2 decades before layer nardo group realize his great vision he talked about wanting

to create his work of fame he could see but unless he's work of fame he could see door to tell us works of fame and he wanted to create his own and so his destiny he felt he lay with a large a large corps with a grand patron and a single person who was going to be writing the checks and that happened to be up to the most powerful man in italy in the the 14 eighties and for the ninety's was the duke of milan lot of equals 4 and so that's why he went north in 1482 to begin working for a summit 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 even prepared and then press a picture for the jew a catalogue of all of us military towns.

methods for destroying every fortress or stronghold and that's built on a rock. i can also design different types of can which was from the stones and ball like a hail storm. leonardo's hopes came to look and it took several years for a job to live eco 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 13 lives 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 that may not have been particularly in magic that what they delivered their work on time and on budget like this fresco of st peter part of. 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.

the refectory was usually decorated with 2 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 2 condor points of christian theology the 'd 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. to the open who was going to paint the north wall. lane out of the vinci up to this point but laid out or had done other than the failed the question project and the 2

small portraits was the production of planes in masks for the entertainment of the jucundus court. was he truly going to be given this monumental fresco but laid out of 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 spectaculars that lot of a cord have staged maybe a couple of times a year in the lion. that is why the lunardi who was determined that with this fresco he was going to come ashore 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 200 years but of course he did something quite

different that archetype showed christ breaking bread thus establishing the 1st eucharist but like a skilled film director leonardo picked a far more dramatic see the moment when jesus the players 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 this same idea that had galvanized his adoration of the manager some 25 years earlier by an order wanted action and then he also wanted the emotion and the dramatic intensity of what happened in in those seconds in jerusalem and that's of course 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 they're asking each other there's a credulity there's disbelief there's anger there is in the cases of the light same joy he just appears to be coming awake and there's being interrogated by st peter and so he does he takes each each of these 12 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 sentimental is not it that the. offering of christ because of e-mails will be on to pick up on a technique because you have been in the town and had enough i ask book express you direct pluck it out was not essential to said especially don't add an ascended into

. unlike want a 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 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 and 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 tonal gradation all those kinds of distinctions that i think are really not possible to achieve in france.

in 1517 with influential cardinal named luigi dada gone 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 be 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 the clay. in the centuries since the 1st go continue to the turret 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 leonarda 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 leader 12 just one year after his elevation to the king marched on malone to claim the city as his home. and what was the 1st thing that king louis did after he set himself up here in the castello is 4th or the answer is in the book written by leonardo as 1st biographer george of us are. as for sorry says the king when on a visit he went see the last supper. the kid was deeply impressed by the excellence of this picture both in composition and execution and convinced that he should take it back to his kingdom 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

the regard for expense so much to 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 we decided on an even bigger gambit 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 1st go to battle of and beyond and the whole of the $500.00 of the douglas in your audience 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 1000 years and here we found a truly remarkable letter if they left it at the elite she said call it a chase him up unless an idiot if you didn't fit in the attic walk toward the she jane najaf militia question to say then here is a letter from the french king himself king louis to 12th to the gun following year to the president of the french republican signoria asking as we have need of must. paint the city of florence and want to make him do something by his own hand we beg you to kindly left 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 fresh 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 this 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 1st 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 joe depleted he's. the madonna of the yarn winder possibly painted with this pupil francesco spaniel the st n. painted with his assistant mel c.

and of course the mona lisa painted by his pupil and close companion solomon. there was a good reason for that here in the sometime early in of elena 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 coms for beauty and refinement. but in the 16th 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 discourage of the black plague and the 100 years war in which joan of arc would play such an important part. so by the time i mean a 12th painted a throng 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 pick. from the italian renaissance. and i think that's why he was so incredibly keen to get the last supper into french . 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 shuttle to god which one served as the residents of george dump was. doesn't wealth worth the most important name besides that of a king with a 12 a sort of prime minister we can underline the fact that he was us both with us the king. like his master king louis don't ones was deeply smitten with the

beauty of italian art he decided he wanted to build a shack to there was entirely in the renaissance time the 1st 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 and just one old single cell phone if you like in grass valley and various lottery. the people of new you know the beech tree in the air and what do we do lots of things to degrade yourself as one of the most beautiful shots of the sixty's and to reinforce. the fact that they also allow to you one of leonardo's leading pupils was working in this chateau around 1509 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 i follow but one work that andrea painted for the shadow still exists the deposition from the cross which today hangs in the. central florida area what we know of him is that hall was from a family of artists we think he was probably working in balance in a period when you know out of his very 1st in line so he wasn't there with him right from the beginning and around 49 to 5 probably came back from venice team with his brother christopher which is of course exactly the moment when you know it is beginning to work on the last supper for s.k. . if that's true then salerno must have been present as the great francisco 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

chain in the archives of the château we find a key piece of evidence an inventory of all property including printers from the 1540 s. one of these paintings is let's send fecht on twine and gone past the femal saying your feast opportunity to be the last supper on canvas with monumental figures which his grace had brought over from malone. could this be our 1st 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 old in 1509 and that pieces begin to fall into place. you know. there is little doubt that solaria was a favorite of the dumb was family and $1507.00 even painted

a portrait of george his 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 15071509 business likely that not only so lottery 0 but also other leonardo pupils were involved including for example jumping at 3. 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 plums. we usually think of and for as 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 16th century primarily as a result of the growing tensions between the protestant north and the catholic south which ultimately produced the 80 years war. this is when the catholic church look for every which way to defend the 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 son. reportedly this plane seems to exist in a 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 bear and just in that specific moment the abbot

of tongue galore. has asked somebody to look off to the beautiful great. painting religious painting for didn't you i be church he wrote a letter to the abbot that he discussed the last supper of leonardo da vinci that was sold on the 2nd of february in 5845 it's oh the painting was actually presented and sold. a product of living on a living just painted by leo a lot of it while it was in those days was not that important but probably. 90 percent of the painting is the work of. the disciples pupils of genius tell me about this theory of who painted christ and seen just well. you know but i'll be. 80 who has been restoring for 22 years the original

fresco in milan will as she said to distance of work of a group. of your pupils disciples of. vinci but he said i'm convinced that christ and especially also the apostle of sin john is your favorite model. that he actually has been painted by him said by a lot of them yeah. why is that city well it's a quality the quality of you look when you look at a painting you see that in john this. is very nice it's exceptional quality and very very about and they also made. some 20 years ago. there are under dig. exact for st 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 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 looting perhaps andreas alarie that lay not to himself paid to christ and since the most important figures on the on the last supper paid yeah yeah and that was so it's they both to painting asked a work. that's fascinating that's fascinating it is a beautiful work but is this the painting that king louis to 12 ordered from leonardo in 1507 and that 100 or so laurie you brought to france and 59. fortunately the abbey has an extensive archive going back many hundreds of years

and here we find in this publishing eyewitness account that for saying poor hunt and jewel it is said that the painting is made after an original painted on the wall that is now a bad patch. when the king of france who conquered milan so all the painting he was very disappointed that he could not take it live in since it was painted up 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 16th century that confirms our theory that louis did 12th order a copy of the last supper from leonardo da vinci and the. 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 scampers could not have been paid for by just one artist such a small time frame so who would have been to the other bend and various solaria the most likely candidate is an italian artist called jump your team for as we will discover in london he went on to make a 2nd call. for 250 years while academy of 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 called materials for artists to inspire them for them to look at when did the world academy acquire the copy of the

last supper and why did they acquire so it was 820 won the academy bought it for 600 guineas which then was a lot of money as a sort of comparison in 1820 the national got a report every old titian just over $300.00 pounds so to spend $600.00 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 it was an amazing there's a night by leonardo that refers to a john picked who we think is probably the same person. we know that a figure more or less of this name is working in milan somewhat least around 1507

so in that 2nd 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 orders from the copy of the world yes so that's very much the current line of thinking although actually maroney has recently going back to the technical drawings underpinning this work and has due to technical analysis of the under drawings of the work has asserted that in fact it's probably all tracking his hand initially and then jumper trainer coming in as a secondary hand. if it's true that jump you 3 know worked on both the turn all over asia and then later around $1520.00 on this copy it would seem that between these 2 paintings we would have a very accurate sense of what the original fresco once looked like. my fink the scale of it is it does appear to be very very close to the original and

certainly means heads that we can investigate further afield the very place the original track and jam capturing obviously had access to the an art is drawing with cartoon and i think that's possibly evidence that there may have been some sort of pushing out all tracing all you know from these original cartoon say you know this is really interesting that the basis may be kind of even closer than we originally thought. not that we found not one but 2 live size versions of the last supper by a layer narrow and his top pupils do we have a long lance have a key to see what the fresco in milan truly looked like. the last supper a painting that would go on to transform the course of western art could anyone in the 49 years haven't dissipated the tremendous impact that this fresco would have

he would have been told by the look of eco and the trial of something we delivered at sea to a 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 seattle for the previous 200 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 are going to make a film of the last supper. long to action and he also wanted the emotion and the dramatic intensity of what happened in those seconds in jerusalem and not 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 3 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 thanks to a canvas and a remote convent in belgium 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 ceiling of the sistine chapel but all that incredible realisable that monumental grasp of the human figure 1st started with the press go on the wall of a refractor in the long. the

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