painting exists in two different versions,
providing art historians with a source of
endless debate over the authenticity of the
works and Leonardo’s methods of paint-
ing. In 1495 he began theThe Last Supper,
a fresco for the refectory of the convent of
Santa Maria delle Grazie. For this work
Leonardo made a change in the traditional
formula of fresco paint, in order to more
easily blend the colors on the hard stone
surface of a wall. His experiment turned
out a failure, as the paint soon began flak-
ing from the wall and over many years the
image deteriorated. Nevertheless,The Last
Supperremains one of Leonardo’s most
famous works and the archetypal image of
this biblical event.
While in Milan he also worked on the
design of a bronze equestrian statue of
Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan’s fa-
ther and predecessor. Despite years of
study and preliminary sketches, he was un-
able to overcome the difficulty of raising a
balanced sculpture of a horse in dynamic
motion. When the French invaded Italy,
the duke was overthrown and Leonardo
left Milan, moving for short periods to
Venice and Mantua, and then back to Flo-
rence. There he painted the Virgin and
Child with St. Anne, a striking study in the
balance and harmony of a group of fig-
ures, and the portrait known as theMona
Lisa,orLa Gioconda—names that were
given to the painting in the nineteenth
century. The painting depicts Lisa Gherar-
dini, the wife of a Florentine silk mer-
chant, wearing a somber black dress and
gazing at the viewer with a mysterious
smile, and posing against a natural back-
ground. In these paintings Leonardo in-
troduced new aspects of “perspective of
color,” in which distant objects lose their
outline as well as their hue. This aspect of
his works had a major influence on the
painters of the later Renaissance, including
Piero de Cosimo, Raphael, and Michelan-
gelo Buonarroti.
Through his many travels and projects
Leonardo kept a series of notebooks, in
which he used a backward script that was
not deciphered until long after his death
and which were not published until the
late nineteenth century. The notebooks are
filled with anatomical drawings, artistic
studies, scientific observations and specu-
lations, and inventive designs, including
hundreds of new war engines, flying ma-
chines, canal locks, and vehicles, many of
which were not produced until centuries
after his death, when the fields of engi-
neering and manufacturing caught up with
the artist’s genius.
In 1506, Leonardo was summoned
back to Milan by Charles d’Amboise, the
French governor of the city. In this period
of his life he took up scientific research
and observation. In his notebooks, he
studied geology, botany, hydraulics, and
human anatomy and produced a series of
accurate drawings of the body and its in-
ternal organs. From 1513 until 1516, he
lived in Rome at the invitation of Pope
Leo X. He completedSt. John the Baptist,
worked on several architectural projects,
and worked in his notebooks. By this time
his fame had spread throughout Europe
and in 1516 he was invited to the royal
French court of Fontainebleau by King
Francis I. He was named the court painter
and architect and was given a handsome
country home in which to live until he
died in 1519.SEEALSO: Michelangelo Buonarroti; paint-
ing; Verrocchio, Andrea delLepanto, Battle of .............................
A momentous naval battle that took place
off the western coast of Greece on Octo-
ber 7, 1571, between the Holy League—Lepanto, Battle of