Can We Ever Restore Leonardo’s “Last Supper”?

Upon seeing in person Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, American novelist Henry James pithily dubbed it “the saddest work of art in the world.” War, weather, da Vinci’s own failed experimentation, and, most of all, time have taken such a collective toll on a work that Renaissance contemporaries called miraculous and instantly recognized as a game changer in art that we most likely may never see it in anything close to its original glory. In Leonardo and The Last Supper, Ross King performs a different, but still glorious restoration of da Vinci’s mural masterpiece in all the color, detail, and depth of the original. King brings to the table all the social history surrounding the work that makes the story of The Last Supper’s creation and survival itself sound like a miracle. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Can We Ever Restore Leonardo’s Last Supper?"

[Image: Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, called Giampietrino (active 1508-1549). The Last Supper (detail), ca. 1520. Image source here.]

[Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me with a review copy of Ross King’s Leonardo and The Last Supper.]