Italy’s second city hosts two noteworthy masterpieces: Michelangelo’s last pietà sculpture and Leonardo’s Last Supper.
On this visit to Milan’s Sforza Castle I get a rare opportunity to enjoy a Michelangelo statue with no crowds. Michelangelo died while still working on the Pietà Rondanini, his last pietà—a representation of a dead Christ with a sorrowful Virgin Mary. While unfinished, it’s a thought-provoking work by a nearly 90-year-old genius. The symbolism is of life and of death: Jesus returning to his mother, as two bodies seem to become one.
Deterioration began within six years of The Last Supper’s completion—Leonardo painted on the wall in layers, as he would on a canvas, instead of applying pigment to wet plaster according to the usual fresco technique. The church was bombed in the Second World War, but — miraculously, it seems — the wall holding The Last Supper remained standing. A 21-year restoration project, completed in 1999, peeled away 500 years of touch-ups, leaving Leonardo’s masterpiece fainter and yet more vibrant.
To give my 15 minutes an extra punch, I decide to enter the room as if I were one of the monks for whom The Last Supper was painted 500 years ago. I imagine eating here, in my robe and sandals, pleased that the wall in my dining room, which for so long has been under some type of construction, is finally done.
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