SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE E CENACOLO VINCIANO

SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE The visit starts from the splendid basilica, built in 1463 and largely modified over a period of just over thirty years to make it the Renaissance jewel that we can still admire today. The chapel dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary, which still exists on the left side of the church, probably constituted the first nucleus of the complex, commissioned by Vimercati to house an image of the Madonna believed to be miraculous. The convent, originally named after St Dominic, was later dedicated to Santa Maria delle Grazie as a tribute to the symbolic significance of this chapel. In charge of the work was Guininforte Solari, the most qualified and famous architect in Milan. The result was a church with a longitudinal plan and side chapels, typical of the 15th-century tradition: a structure destined to be disrupted and surpassed shortly. Ludovico il Moro ordered a vast renovation of the church in Renaissance style. One of the first innovations was the construction of the portal, for which Ludovico il Moro had the marble delivered directly from the Fabbrica del Duomo. This was followed by the construction of the tribune and the partial destruction of the church by Solari. Another famous architect of the time, Donato Bramante, was commissioned to build a new tribune. Bramante devised an innovative architecture that made the church a large unitary organism: he eliminated the division into naves and chapels and designed a cubic space, surmounted by a dome. After the construction of the building, the most important Milanese families requested that the chapels be used as burial places for family members, and entrusted their decoration to important artists of the time: such as the Chapel of Santa Caterina with sculptures by Antonello da Messina, the Chapels of the Adoring Virgin and Santa Corona with frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari. Inside the church is an information panel with a short text in Italian, English and Braille characters. In the central part of the panel, a relief-drawn plan helps orientation within the building. In addition, by framing the QR Code or NFC with your smartphone, you can access content that can be used in various ways, for people with sensory disabilities.

VINCIAN'S CHENCH In the church square, to the left of the basilica façade, is the entrance to the Museo del Cenacolo vinciano. Here you can admire Leonardo's masterpiece which, as the UNESCO motivation states, opened a new era in the history of art. On a wall of the rectangular room that then served as the refectory of the convent, between 1494 and 1497, at the behest of Ludovico il Moro, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper. The apostles appeared to be sitting right next to the friars of the convent, and the scene was made even more realistic by the precision with which the dishes and utensils on the table were painted in detail. But above all, what is still striking is the use of light and perspective, which succeed in depicting a precise moment in the story of the Last Supper: the opening of three windows, beyond which a bright landscape can be glimpsed, backlit, also illuminates the Apostles from behind and from the sides. Although it is a wall painting, the Last Supper is not a true fresco. Leonardo, in fact, had an idea of perfection that could not be rendered with the speed required by a fresco. He therefore chose to paint in mixed tempera on plaster, because this innovative technique would have allowed him a slow and meticulous development of the painting and thus an extreme attention to detail, whereas a fresco would have required a rapid application of colour, with the plaster still wet. Moreover, the fresco would not have allowed for the numerous revisions that we know from the restorations: we now know that Leonardo also modified the work according to the light entering the refectory room, in order to be able to capture the exact moment of the day in which he wanted to set the painting. Unfortunately, the result of this technique is very delicate and the paint began to deteriorate over time. For this reason, the Last Supper has been subjected to numerous restorations over the centuries, the last of which was completed in 1999, after twenty years of work. This last intervention succeeded in bringing to light what remains of the original drafts. Following this latest restoration, a sophisticated air purification system was introduced in the Upper Room, which allows visitors to approach the work without damaging it. However, only 25 visitors are admitted per entrance for a maximum of 15 minutes. In addition to Leonardo's masterpiece, inside the Upper Room is, on the opposite wall, the Crucifixion frescoed by the Lombard painter Giovanni Donato da Montorfano in 1495. In this way, the initial and final episode of the Passion of Christ are depicted in the same place.