Sucker but. When it was 1st shown in 1499. 00 they created shock waves through italy and beyond changing the world of art for ever but a 20 year restoration effort has revealed the awful truth of the original fresco only some 20 percent is still visible simply put we can no longer seen or understand why this painting had such a devastating impact. Or can wait. This is the incredible story of a hub across europe following a trail of clues and documents hidden for centuries that suggests that layla doe and his workshop painted another last supper a huge life size cant say 100 other than the king of france does that painting still exist if so can it reveal the secrets of the original fresco. This is where the story starts in the long the most important fashion in business city in all of modern italy and in that sense my much has changed even in the 15th century milan was a bustling city filled with artists and musicians. Of older cities states and italy the duchy of milan was the most powerful the most exuberant and the wealthiest buy for no wonder that many kings in europe wanted to conquer it to killie because the man in charge the juke named little because for tips on was a tyrant who had seized power in 14 he was to many other such rulers he was desperate to cloak his the legitimacy with the splendor of a renaissance school. Would you could many projects a monastery complex called it just tolls on the poppea and a new Church Building right here in milan called the sometime audi a that i got sick but the biggest project of all was this massive cathedral deliberately designed to be the biggest Church Building in all of italy so naturally this city was a magnet for Young Artists and sculptors from all over the region. But while they are not oh this artist wasnt from lombardy he was from florence the most exciting city in all of italy a wellspring of the renaissance what was he doing painting at fresco in milan. Answer may be found in a small village outside of florence called vincent. Lunatic who was a natural child the son of a farmers daughter katherina and one day had a role in the hay with a promising young notary cole said pierre of course marys was out of the question a Bright Future awaited said pietro provided he married a wife from a prestigious family. Thats why labor nardo was never truly part of the creative circles of florence around lorenzo the meeting with artists like betty hillandale or michelangelo these were folks who wrote latin sonnets and could hold their own in fine society there not i was never part of that. But said piero never forgot his son and was always ready to use his connections to help him get work but the lack of a proper education left Young Leonardo at a major disadvantage. Instead he was apprenticed to the workshop of one of the most prolific artists of florence and that i am here here leonardo learned how to mix pigments prepare panels or transfer a large fresco drawings called cartoons to a plaster wall. Eventually for rocky allowed him to paint one of the angels in his panel of the baptism of christ its obvious that leonardos angel is much more beautiful than the rather dire angel to the right painted by broke people himself so how did he create such lovely and shellac faces the answer by using a New Invention called oils. As most of florence still use the flat collars of tempera paint which dries quickly leonardo had begun to experiment with pigments mixed with oils the technique 1st developed in northern europe. Day adventists oil has several suspect temper is that in order to create a 3 dimensional object you pretty much have to mix every single color that you put in there or crosshatch it so you get the feeling that we dont mention but with oil you didnt have that problem you can have an incredible range from black to white collar seamlessly and sell this was a huge shift for for the artists and around a song. And there is a classically trained artist who painted a live size re creation of the Sistine Chapel for the Motion Picture angels and the. And how were these orals made well they were ground up pigments that could be anything from bones to dry possibly to because famous ultra were able to the can from uk on a thought that was so expensive that it cost more than actual gold and its own weight my god more than gold has it that. The 15th century the quatro cento was a an exciting time to be in florence it was a time of rebirth the renaissance the revival of the ancient world and the arts and science and literature and in engineering here for example feel really pull brunelleschi used roman engineering to create this vast dome over the do almost the cathedral of florence while burlesque he was taking measurements of ancient temples and rome he had discovered that when you draw it as street or a building all the horizontal lines seem to converge to a Common Center what today we call the vanishing point. The lasky had discovered the laws of linear perspective it revolutionized renaissance art suddenly painters could create an illusion of 3 dimensional space as if the image they painted was a window on another world. You know for us its almost impossible to imagine the impact of this innovation why because today we are surrounded by simulated images full of billboards Television Cinema they have conditioned our brain to interpret flat images as 3 dimensional reality but in the middle ages men and women never had that experience before and so there must have been utterly amazed. By a painting like this one. The crucifixion by massager the 1st fresco in history to use linear perspective. People in those days was a thought of as some form of magic to see space rather was only a flat wall. Where no was also trained in the magic of linear perspective in the workshop of his master of akio and he too was amazed by the possibilities but as he began his 1st major painting they are not are realised that linear perspective had one major drawback. It tended to stifle the figures and inhibit their expressive power in many paintings the figures became like puppets fixed on a rigid grid 10 years later leonardo would write how to give you figures appeasing air. Look about you. When you see a beautiful face remember its features and fix them in your mind. So what leonardo is saying is dont let geometry deprive your characters of feelings of emotions of psychological drama and the 1st bold attempt to do just that as a painting that hangs right here in the you feeds it called the adoration of the magic. Unfortunately the monks who commissioned the panel werent interested in moving the boundaries of italian art they simply wanted a pretty picture of the native any that people could recognize and worship. And so the work was stopped and the painting remained unfinished it would take nearly 2 decades before layer nardo group realize his great vision he talked about wanting to create his work of fame you can see but unless hes work of fame he could sit down at tellers works of fame and he wanted to create his own and so his destiny he felt he lay with a large a large core with a grand patron and a Single Person who was going to be writing the checks and that happened to be at the most powerful man and itll leave me the 14 eighties and for the ninetys was the duke of milan lot of equals fortson and so thats why he went north in 1482 to begin working for someone who was in effect a prince and not just a group of monks thats why alone are decided to turn his back on the forums and thats why he came here in milan filled with ambition not as an artist but as an engineer a military engineer he even prepared an impressive picture for the job at cataloguing all of us military talents. Methods for destroying every fortress were strong me and is built on a rock. I can also design different types of can which we heard stones and ball like a hail storm. Leonardos hopes came to naught it took several years for a joke little vico to finally notice the florentine artist but the project he gave him a huge equestrian statue ended in failure the only thing that remains of this massive project are his studies. Live in arthur was ready to tackle the greatest most ambitious. Composition of his young career a series of 13 live sized portraits of men seated at a table for a wall in milan. How did the last supper project come about and who asked leonardo de painted. This may come as a surprise but you really dont know what we need to know is that the jukes for tended to favor home grown artists like giovanna the month of fall. May not have been particularly in maje to what they deliver at their work on time and on budget like this fresco of st Peter Bartter what we do know is that the job had chosen this church to become the pantheon of his dynasty. Actually it was part of a Dominican Convent and the abbot white away saw as opportunity so he asked the joke if he would build him a new or factory place to have meals for the monks complete with frescos. A refectory was usually decorated with 2 paintings a last supper and a crucifixion of christ. The last supper illustrated the institution of the eucharist. Whereas the crucifixion depicted the redemption of mankind to the suffering of jesus the 2 connor points of christian theology the the most important for us go destined for the south wall was the crucifixion of christ this did you gave to giovanni dum want to fun know whose family had been working in the cathedral of milan for many decades. The who all but who was going to paint the north wall. Not of the vinci up to this point of layout or had done other than the failed the question project in the 2 small portraits was the production of plays and masks for the entertainment of the jew can his court. Was he truly going to be given this monumental fresco but laid out a was in effect a special effects man for the duke and so i i guess we would think of him as a sort of a combination set designer Costume Designer and special effects person for these spectaculars that lot of eco would have staged maybe a couple of times a year in my life and. That is why lou nordo was determined that with this fresco he was going to use thomas the moment. And they probably would have been expecting that he would have done a last supper akin to all of those that have been done primarily in florence in tuscany sienna for the previous 200 years but of course he did something quite different that archetype showed christ breaking bread thus establishing the 1st eucharist but like a skilled film director leonardo picked a far more dramatic see the moment when jesus the claires that one of the men in the room is a traitor. That news literally explodes from the center and hits the apostles in various poses of shock disbelief sorrow even anger the full panoply of Human Emotions is laid bare the same idea that had galvanized his adoration of the manager some 25 years earlier leonardo wanted action and he also wanted the emotion and the dramatic intensity of what happened in in those seconds in jerusalem and that of course one of the magnificent things about the painting he brings that to life and we see that an instant thing we can understand whats happening there is that hold for techs of human drama thats right where everyone is reacts. Differently theyre asking each other theres even credulity theres disbelief theres anger there is in the cases im like st john he just appears to be coming awake and theres being interrogated by st peter and so he does he takes each of each of these 12 and gives them. Some characteristics some you know a facial expression hand gestures things like that in order to take us into the character but here is the great tragedy most of these beautiful expressions are no longer visible today but i say metal is not it could have been all kinds of. I mean the president has an emotional journey on the typical on a technique because you have been and now putting on that added a feisty book fostex question that i plotted out was not us how to set a spotlight on our own ascendant and. Unlike the funnel who used conventional fresco techniques leonardo could not resist experimenting with his pigments to try to create the same optical effects that he had pioneered with his or helping to use the result was catastrophic i think the thing thats so interesting about him is that hes got different intellectual interests and so hes trying to achieve different goals which aint but hes asking different questions of them larry keith is the head of conservation and keeper at Londons National Gallery but also i think he really was in shit and exploring. Nuances of total british and all those kinds of distinctions that i think are really not possible to achieve in france. In 1517 an influential cardinal named luigi dot argonne and his secretary and tonio debbie optus went on a tour and among others visited the convent in milan to see the last supper. As the be out this would write it is most excellent although it is beginning to decay either because of the damp in the sun the wall or some other form of the clicked. In the centuries since the 1st go continued to deteriorate because it was adjoining a kitchen so all the moisture was trapped in the wall. In the end theres really no way to know what lane are those great masterpiece looked like. Or is there. Long before an tonio to visit another even more distinguished visitor came to milan with an army into this was the newly crowned king of friends leader 12 just one year after his elevation to the king marched on milan to clean the city as this. And what was the 1st thing that king louis did after he set himself up here in the castello sports are the answer is in the book written by lay on our toes 1st biographer george of us our. As for sorry says the king went on a visit he went see the last supper. That it was deeply pressed by the excellence of this picture both in composition and execution and convinced that he should take it back to his king so he tried to find haka techs who could build a framework of wood and i am to safely transport the fresco back to france with the regard for expense so much to he want to have it. But since it was painted on a wall his majesty could not have visions as such. But kings arent used to being told what they cannot have and so louis decided on an even bigger gamble but for that he needed leonard of himself at least thats our theory. Even though leonardo was in milan he was wanted back in florence to finish another 1st go the battle of beyond and the whole of the 500. 00 of the lots of dallas a new audience so he wasnt in a position to stay in milan and do whatever the king had in mind for him but then something extraordinary something that changed everything. This is the arcadia adelas thought of the feet hands of the state archives of florence with documents that go back over a 1000 years and here we found a truly remarkable letter which they let out the elysian call it a chase him up. An idiot if you dont think india to question authority she denies militia question to say then here is a letter from the french king himself in the lead a 12 to the gun following year in the president of the French Republic to see all we are asking as we have need of must live not a vote of each painter to the city of florence and want to make him do something by his own hand we beg you to kindly let it all work for us for a period of time and carry out the work we tend to do. I think its becoming clear what the french king once lived in order to do if he can have their fresh school itself he will have the next best thing a copy on canvas that he can take back to france. And whats interesting about is that the king doesnt tell the singh urea what he would like him to do he is very cagey about the thing doesnt say how old because if our theory is correct and he wants leonardo to make a copy of the last supper that would take. A very long time indeed. The idea of such a live sized copy was not far fetched leonardo was arguably one of the 1st painters in history who used his studio to make copies of his own works for sale such as divergent of the rocks painted with his associate to play these. The madonna of the yarn winder possibly painted with his pupil francesco spaniel the saint and painted with his assistant mel c. And of course the mona lisa painted by his pupil and close companion solomon. There was a good reason for that here in the sometime early enough about had a large studio with lots of assistance but he worked very slowly and its difficult to maintain a large studio when you have a very limited output but its not so hard if you use your best assistants to make copies of your works for sale under the masters supervision of course so what happened to this copy of the last supper who painted it and as a still exist. Theres only one way to find out and that is to go to france. Today we think of paris as the worlds epicenter of our culture and fashion this is where the world coms for beauty and refinement but in the 16th century things for very different. People sometimes forget that but in the middle ages it was actually burgundy. Which dictated french culture not just an art but also in poetry and music and then came the scourge of the black plague and the 100 years war in which joan of arc would play such an important part. So but its why im doing the 12th came to the throne france was a mere shadow of its former self and louis was very much aware. He knew that french artists needed to take their cue from the italian renaissance. And i think thats why he was so incredibly keen to get the last offer into french. But if thats true and if a lot of sides copy of the last supper was actually made where did it go the answer i think maybe hidden behind these walls this is the shuttle did god which one served as the residents of georgia done was. Just above where. The most important member besides the king with a twist or sort of Prime Minister we can underline the fact that he was us both with us dick cheney hard. Like his master in the we done once was deeply smitten with the beauty of italian art he decided he wanted to build a shock to there was entirely in the renaissance time the 1st one and friends and so he brought back scores of italian artists and masons to do just that. But it took an artist when 50 stood. On films through 1225 and russell and. Various like. The people of new you know to the beach came here yeah and what did he do to do lots of things to degrade yourself in front of the most beautiful shot of the sixtys and to reinforce. The fact that. One of laon ottos leading pupils was working in this chateau around 1509 may be the missing piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately the chapel and much of the shuttle were destroyed in the french revolution and the term world not follow but one work that andrea painted for the shadow