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Leonardo da Vinci
was a Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High
Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor,
architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge
and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific
endeavours. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the
course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and
his scientific studies—particularly in the fields of anatomy,
optics, and hydraulics—anticipated many of the developments of
modern science.
About 1482 Leonardo entered the
service of the duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, having written the
duke an astonishing letter in which he stated that he could build
portable bridges; that he knew the techniques of constructing
bombardments and of making cannons; that he could build ships as
well as armoured vehicles, catapults, and other war machines; and
that he could execute sculpture in marble, bronze, and clay. He
served as principal engineer in the duke’s numerous military
enterprises and was active also as an architect. In addition, he
assisted the Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in the celebrated
work Divina Proportione (1509).
Evidence indicates
that Leonardo had apprentices and pupils in Milan, for whom he
probably wrote the various texts later compiled as Treatise on
Painting (1651; trans. 1956). From 1495 to 1497 Leonardo
laboured on his masterpiece, THE LAST SUPPER, a mural in the
refectory of the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.
Unfortunately, his experimental use of oil on dry plaster (on what
was the thin outer wall of a space designed for serving food) was
technically unsound, and by 1500 its deterioration had begun.
Since 1726 attempts have been made, unsuccessfully, to restore it;
a concerted restoration and conservation program, making use of
the latest technology, was begun in 1977 and is reversing some of
the damage. Although much of the original surface is gone, the
majesty of the composition and the penetrating characterization of
the figures give a fleeting vision of its vanished splendour.
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