It was a full house at the seminar hall of Alipore Museum on Tuesday where the architect and former director of Museo Nazionale del Cenacolo Vinciano (The Last Supper Museum) in Milan, Chiara Rostagno, was speaking. The full attendance prompted her to remark: “How many people are touched by the genius of da Vinci.” She herself surely is.
The team leader of the monumental The Last Supper Restoration project between 2016 and 2018, Rostagno herself led an impassioned masterclass-type lecture on the epic project of restoring one of the world’s most iconic pieces of art, titled Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper — A Timeless Archetype.
Da Vinci’s painting has inspired, among many other things, a similar painting by Johann Zoffany, now on display at St John’s Church in Kolkata.
The Last Supper is painted on a wall of a refectory that used to serve as the canteen for the monks of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy, she said as she began a detailed study of one of the largest works by da Vinci.
Work on the conservation and restoration of da Vinci’s The Last Supper mural has been carried out over many centuries.
Completed in the late 15th century by the Renaissance artist showing the reactions of the Twelve Disciples at the Last Supper to Jesus’s announcement that one among them will betray him, the mural had started deteriorating by 1517. Da Vinci had painted it between 1495 and 1498.
“People across continents came to see the painting and most of them wanted to catch the artist in action,” Rostagno said.
The corrosion of the work was partly due to da Vinci’s unconventional painting technique, moisture absorption by the outer wall on which it was painted, the heat and smoke of the convent’s kitchen and candles, a flood in 1800 and finally, bombardment during World War II.
An architect specialising in conservation, Rostagno, who also studies the impact of climate change on the conservation of cultural heritage, believes in minimal intervention while restoring important works of art.
Explaining the different elements of The Last Supper, Rostagno showed how large parts of the master’s painting have been lost to the natural elements.
“We have not intervened and left it as it is after removing the dirt. This is because, from a particular angle, the painting looks complete. It is only when you peer into it, do you see the ravages of time,” said Rostagno, who practically lived at the site during the restoration process.
“As the layers of dirt were peeling away, the beauty of the painting was emerging,” she said.
