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Leonardo and The Last Supper
Ross King

Leonardo and The Last Supper

Milan, 1496 and forty-four-year-old Leonardo da Vinci has a reputation for taking on commissions and failing to complete them. He is in a state of professional uncertainty and financial difficulty. For eighteen months he has been painting murals in both the Sforza Castle in Milan and the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The latter project will become the Last Supper, a complex mural that took a full three years to complete on a surface fifteen feet high by twenty feet wide. Not only had he never attempted a painting of such size, but he had no experience whatsoever in painting in the physically demanding medium of fresco.

For more than five centuries the Last Supper has been an artistic, religious and cultural icon. The art historian Kenneth Clark has called it 'the keystone of European art', and for a century after its creation it was regarded as nothing less than a miraculous image. Even today, according to Clark, we regard the painting as 'more a work of nature than a work of man'. And yet there is a very human story behind this artistic 'miracle', which was created against the backdrop of momentous events both in Milan and in the life of Leonardo himself.

In Leonardo and the Last Supper, Ross King tells the complete story of this creation of this mural: the adversities suffered by the artist during its execution; the experimental techniques he employed; the models for Christ and the Apostles that he used; and the numerous personalities involved - everyone from the Leonardo's young assistants to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan who commissioned the work. Ross King's new book is both a record of Leonardo da Vinci's last five years in Milan and a 'biography' of one of the most famous works of art ever painted.

Book Details:

  • Author: Ross King
  • Published Year: 2012
  • Rights Sold
    • UK: Bloomsbury
    • US: Bloomsbury
Ross King

Ross King

Ross King is the bestselling author of books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. Among his books are Brunelleschi’s Dome (2000), Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2002), The Judgment of Paris (Governor General’s Award, 2006), Leonardo and The Last Supper (Governor General’s Award, 2012), and Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (Charles Taylor Prize, 2017). He has also published two novels (Domino and Ex-Libris), a biography of Niccolò Machiavelli, an...
More about Ross King

Book Reviews

  • "This is quintessential King territory, and his uniquely detailed, far-ranging, and engrossing chronicle of the creation of this revolutionary masterpiece … perfectly complements his best-selling Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2003). Himself an exceptional portraitist and craftsman, King brings to precise life a fully dimensional, irresistibly audacious, and wizardly Leonardo and his powerfully affecting, miraculously surviving mural … Readers will love the dramatic, vivid, and brainy mix of biography and art history."
    Booklist (starred review)
  • "An absorbing study of a disappearing masterpiece … King places the painting in its political, social and artistic context, describing both the meaning of da Vinci’s work and the violent 15th-century Italian world that spawned it … King plumbs the painting’s religious, secular, psychological and political meanings, registered in the facial expressions and hand positions, the significance of the food on the table and, most fascinatingly, the salt spilled by the betraying Judas … King’s book is an impressive restoration—the author helps readers see this painting for the first time."
    Kirkus (starred review)
  • "King gives us a gripping account of how that painting was created … [and] deftly situates the painting in a historical context — against political events in Italy at the time, religious attitudes of the day and contemporaneous developments in art — and also places it in the context of Leonardo’s career… [a] fascinating volume."
    The New York Times
  • "Ross King reveals the painting in a light that is novel and fascinating yet also scholarly. As with a previous title, Brunelleschi’s Dome (2000), his scrupulous excavation of social, political and religious texts, as well as art historical sources, permits him to tell a familiar story as though it had never been told before."
    Financial Times
  • "A meticulous telling of the genesis of Leonardo’s great fresco … The strength of his account lies in its mass of absorbing detail, which builds into a truly immersive portrait of an era."
    Sunday Telegraph
  • "King has the gift of clear, unpretentious exposition, and an instinctive narrative flair … an engaging and unusually intimate view of one of the great icons of western art."
    The Guardian
  • "A rich account … While the picture can no longer draw the viewer into the room shared by Christ and the apostles, King’s book does succeed in taking the reader into Leonardo’s vivid world."
    The Sunday Times
  • "‘King … has an infectious relish for the gaudy, brutal and brilliant world of the Italian Renaissance … Anyone wanting a vivid souvenir … should be perfectly content with a post-card and a copy of this engaging book."
    Mail on Sunday