Leonardo da Vinci completes “The Last Supper.” It is a work that ingeniously combines natural and artificial perspective, conveying a sense of motion that communicates the emotions and thoughts of the portrayed figures. It captures a moment of drama, a theatrical performance. The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, compensates him with a vineyard near the church, which Leonardo will keep for the rest of his life. But the oil and tempera technique and the pigments used, invented and tested on site by Leonardo himself, prove unstable: just 20 years later, the painting begins to deteriorate significantly. When Vasari, Leonardo’s biographer, sees it in 1550, the painting is already in ruins. By 1652, it is so dim that the friars decide to open a door through the lower central section of the painting. Six attempts to restore Leonardo’s work follow, many of which only worsen the situation. The last attempt was in 1978 and concluded in 1998, using infrared spectrography techniques and microscopic samples of the painting to try to uncover the original pigments beneath the restoration efforts. The painting’s conception was innovative and exceptional, but the execution was poor.
