feel dumb because I never noticed the door until I was right in front of it. Now I can't miss it. If you ever see it in person, the only way is with a tour guide because they move you through so the climate/dust/etc controlled room is still able to do its thing. And the tour guide will tell you that there's a kitchen on the other side, and the room the painting is in was a dining room/cafeteria. So back when the painting wasn't appreciated as much as it is today, someone cut a door straight through the painting for efficiency. Then the steam from the kitchen came through the door and has deteriorated the painting quite a bit. The restoration by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon was phenomenal, though! She's like a hero to the historians who look after the painting.
I had never actually thought about where this painting is.
I went to Milan 4 times on business before I learnt this was there, on my 5th trip I learnt you had to book to get into it
It’s bigger than you think but because it’s high up it looks small.
Edit: Dimensions: 189.0 in × 90.6 in (480.10 cm × 230.10 cm)
I remember walking into the Sistine Chapel and being surprised at how small it is. I imagined it would be the size of a regular church or something, which, in hindsight makes no sense. Why would it be? It’s a chapel…
It was a weird experience too, suddenly being right there, looking at something I’d seen a thousand times before, not entirely certain how to comprehend it
Not a freso.
"The Last Supper is not a fresco Though it is a wall painting, da Vinci invented a new method to complete the Last Supper. Da Vinci needed time to work on the Last Supper, time which fresco painting doesn’t allow. In a fresco, tempera has to be added quickly before the plaster dries, forcing an artist to work quickly and making it very difficult to make changes. Instead, da Vinci decided to add tempera to already dry plaster, allowing him to work slowly, develop the shading that comes with the chiaroscuro of the mural and make any changes necessary over time. He did this by coating the wall with a material that absorbs the oil paint and protects it against moisture. While it did allow him to paint as he wished, the paint began to break loose from the base coat as early as 1517 – just about two decades after he began. As a result da Vinci’s Last Supper has suffered changes in temperature, moisture and humidity more than most frescoes."
The building was bombed during WWII. The frescoes were protected by scaffolding, but the roof collapsed almost in its entirety.
