RA Magazine Autumn 2012 Issue Number: 116 Book Review: Leonardo
and the Last Supper Two new books on Leonardo raise fascinating
questions about when a work of art ceases to exist and how the
artist dealt with demanding patrons, writes Edmund Fawcett For
all its fame, The Last Supper was soon gone. Less than 20 years
after Leonardo da Vinci finished it in 1498, the paint was
already peeling badly. One reason he chose treacherous oil and
tempera, rather than fresco, safer and more usual for a mural,
is that he had little experience of fresco. Another is that
fresco required speed and lacked subtlety, whereas Leonardo
shone at conveying mood and attitude. By the middle of the 17th
century, a knowledgeable visitor to Milan reported that the
figures of Christ and his apostles were barely visible. In 1770,
after at least eight partial restorations earlier in the
century, virtually the entire work was repainted. The assault on
Leonardo’s dramatic masterpiece did not stop there. In 1943, an
Allied bomb destroyed most