In the refectory of the 15th-century church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, ancient seat of the Inquisition, there is one of the greatest masterpieces in all the history of the art: the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.
The latest renovation project, which ended in May 1999 after 20 years of patient work, brought this precious and fragile "fresco" back to its original splendour, removing from the surface centuries of repainting, glues, paints, dust, which dangerously changed its colours and brightness.
Ludovico il Moro in 1594 asked to the Tuscan artist to fresco the northern wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which he chose as a mausoleum for himself and his family. Leonardo finished the work in 1498, one year before the French invasion which put an end to the great funeral projects of the Duke of Milan.
One of the reasons why the Last Supper is so degraded and damaged is that Leonardo used a particular painting technique: not the typical one for the frescoes, which imposed to the artist to paint very quickly, and which he did not like, but a dry painting, a tempera on a gaseous preparation, which decays very easily and already in the first decade of the 16th century it was ruined. Vasari exaggerated in 1568, when he declared that " the painting is so damaged that you cannot see anything but a stain ", but its conditions certainly were only worsening due to the renovation works of the following centuries. It survived centuries of neglect and the bombings of the Second World War in 1943, and finally we can admire the beauty and the mysterious charm of this painting, like all other works of art of the Tuscan artist.