Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper

When Leonardo da Vinci began laying the first brushstrokes, in 1494, on the refectory wall of the convent adjacent to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, he probably had no idea he was about to create one of the greatest artistic masterpieces of all time. Adopting the innovative, and equally unusual, dry painting technique, the Renaissance genius could not foresee that he would have condemned his work to a particular fragility, and put its conservation at risk in the following centuries. This same technique, however, was what allowed an improved chromatic unity, a rendering of transparencies and light effects, and an extreme precision in details, visible only from close range. Today, thanks to the exclusive magnification published in this volume—realized by Haltadefinizione, the special digital photographic archive collecting a vast number of Italian artistic masterpieces—even the smallest details of the Last Supper, invisible to the naked eye, can be observed in all their expressive splendor. As you leaf through this book you can admire from up close, as never before possible, the realistic expressions on the faces of the individual Apostles, the movements and positions of their hands, and the smallest details of the outfitted table, thus entering practically into direct contact with Leonardo’s genius at work.