Ross King, the author of Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, explores the life of another Renaissance giant in Leonardo and the Last Supper.
The book is as much a history of Leonardo and his times as it is about The Last Supper. King’s aim is to show how culture, commerce, food, fashion, politics, eclectic characters, and religion inspired the insatiably curious artist to create one of the greatest works of art in the history of the Western world. Like his subject, King has rich material to draw from.
Leonardo was the illegitimate child of his father’s affair with a fifteen-year-old domestic slave. Being illegitimate in Italy at the time was neither shameful nor particularly looked down upon, though illegitimate children could not enter certain professions, such as law, or attend university. Leonardo probably never knew his mother well. She was married off and had five children with a man who was reputedly a troublemaker.
His father was a successful notary who had multiple wives and eleven children. Leonardo, by contrast, never married and had no children. In fact, he seems to have had no romantic relationships with women.
By all accounts, he was a beautiful young man and a handsome adult. He had many friends, including young boys whose curly hair and androgyny he admired. He was devoted for the rest of his life to one boy in particular, Salai, who often stole from him, his friends, and his clients. Salai may even have sold the Mona Lisa after Leonardo’s death. I can’t help but believe that Leonardo saw a little of himself in the boy: beautiful, an outsider, devoted to his friends, but with demons that sometimes frustrated those around him.
Leonardo’s career began when his father recognized his talent and arranged an apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio, a Florentine goldsmith, sculptor, and painter. The apprenticeship lasted eight to ten years.
Rival factions often warred, but battles for power within Italy were often surprisingly bloodless. Someone with a claim to a territory or throne would gather an army, and, as in a chess match, the rivals would maneuver until one checkmated the other, often without much killing.
It was at this time that Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, invited Charles VIII of France into Italy to take Naples, since Lodovico stood to benefit politically. But the French king and his 30,000-man army were not so restrained. They marched through Italy virtually unopposed, massacring as they went, until they took Naples.
Lodovico would forever regret inviting the Frenchman onto Italian soil. The regional politics and wars of a fractured Italy are chronicled throughout the narrative.
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It was Lodovico who sponsored Leonardo’s multiple projects—interior design, masks, drapes, portraits, parties, set design, festivals….
Leonardo had moved to Milan to develop weapons and architecture. His talent had made him a reputation, and he promised great things but at forty he had yet to deliver a masterpiece.
Lodovico must have been pleased because Leonardo earned somewhere in the ballpark of $350,000, equivalent in current dollars, a year for being his resident artist in Milan. It was Lodovico who commissioned him to paint “The Last Supper.”
Many fascinating insights into his life are touched upon. He could write backwards and was left handed. He was a great musician. He was a vegetarian. He once wrote that his first memory was of a bird. He had trouble learning languages and earned a reputation for not being able to finish a project.
And he was interested in creating so many things: a flying machine, a submarine, better waterways, innovative military weapons, architectural projects…. He wrote that the mechanical sciences were the most noble and useful of the arts. Interesting tidbits dot the landscape of his life.
He was not religious, and often detested many in the clergy; he thought they were hypocrites, but he seemed to accept the common beliefs in Christ. But he also broke with tradition and found stories such the the flood and Noah’s Ark to be impossible.
Of course this is about the “The Last Supper” painted in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. He painted many of the apostles based on locals that he studied carefully. He researched hands and hand gestures that he integrated into the mural. The food and drink present (including the delicacy of oranges and eels) were carefully chosen and considered.
The current religious beliefs that affected the painting’s symbolism were incorporated. And he tried to balance the painting’s theme between the new Eucharist and Jesus’s revelation that Judas will betray him.
The colors and technique and materials and geometry in the painting and his artistic approach are closely examined.
King also debunks any Dan Brown Da Vinci Code type conspiracy theories.
The real tragedy in Leonardo’s life, and there are a few, is that so much of what he created did not survive—including much of the original “The Last Supper,” despite valiant efforts to restore it. Although because this painting changed art history and spawned a new era, it was reproduced many times during his lifetime.
Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King is easy to read, and I enjoyed the colorful Italian names. And it is fascinating from beginning to end with insights into all aspects of Leonardo da Vinci’s remarkable life and perhaps his second most famous painting.
See Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King Audiobooks, Amazon/Audible, and Bookstores who are not Amazon.
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