Art: War Casualty

The world’s best-known painting, Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, is ruined, perhaps irreparably. That was the sad news from Italy last week.

Chemically, the Last Slipper had always been a bad risk. The refectory of Milan’s convent church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Da Vinci painted the jfresco, was damp to start with. To make matters worse, Da Vinci, the eternal experimenter, invented special tempera pigments for the fresco, and they proved to be less durable than those then commonly in use. Even in Da Vinci’s own lifetime the Last Supper had begun to fade, and as early as 1556 Art Historian Vasari complained that it had become “a muddle of blots.”

Blurred Apostles. Until World War II science and a succession of restorers managed to preserve a reasonable facsimile of the Last Supper for each new generation of art lovers. In August 1943, Allied bombs fell near the refectory. Two walls and part of a third came tumbling down. The fourth wall, with Da Vinci’s masterpiece, protected by layers of sandbags, still stood.

Then, for the next two years, no one took any more trouble to save the Last Supper, which was left exposed to rain, wind and sun. When the last of the sandbags was removed in the summer of 1945, an Allied Commission reported that the painting was in good condition. Says associate director of the Worcester (Mass.) Museum Perry Cott (who, as a member of the commission, ordered the sandbags removed): “The Last Supper may be getting worse and it surely isn’t getting any better. It is a miracle that it was saved at all.”

Italian critics insist, however, that despite Allied disclaimers the masterpiece was badly damaged by exposure to humidity after the bombing. They say also that the wall is thick with mold from the rotting of the damp sandbags.

Reported a TIME correspondent from Milan last week: “The head of Christ has nearly vanished. The faces of Philip and James the Elder appear to be completely corroded and are covered by a layer of saltpetrous calcinate which threatens to spread over the entire fresco. From a few feet away the apostles are an indiscriminate blur. The landscape originally visible in the background has disappeared.”

In the past the friars of Grazie kept stoves burning day & night behind the wall to drive the winter damp out. This winter they have no coal, and humidity, unchecked, will do more damage. A task force from the Italian Art Monument Department has made plans to rebuild the refectory. Professor Emilio Lavagnino, chairman of the Government committee in charge of the fresco, guessed gloomily that his work “offers a possible guarantee to keep the picture in some recognizable form for another 30 years—not more.”