Praise for The Search for the Last Supper

(PBS Stations, Spring 2018)

“The centuries have not been kind to Leonardo’s masterpiece, the Last Supper—only 20 percent of the original painting is thought to remain intact, making it difficult to fully comprehend the impact the piece would have had when it was new. But what if there was a way to turn back time, to return to Leonardo’s studio, if you will, and see The Last Supper as he did?

When authors Jean-Pierre Isbouts and Christopher Heath Brown were working on their 2017 book The Young Leonardo: The Evolution of a Revolutionary Artist, 1472–1499, which follows the Renaissance great from his career beginnings in Florence to his major breakthrough, The Last Supper, they assumed such a miracle was impossible.

Then, one day at a party, a friend told them that there was a second version of the painting, completed by Leonardo and his studio on canvas just a few years after the original mural. “I said ‘you’re crazy!’” Brown told artnet News at a recent screening of the pair’s new documentary short, The Search for the Last Supper. The film tracks the origins of this little-known second version and the authors’ efforts to trace it to a remote abbey in Tongerlo, Belgium, an hour outside Antwerp. When they finally found the painting, they were amazed to discover just how good the Tongerlo Last Supper looked. The figures line up perfectly, suggesting it was made using the same cartoons used to produce the original.”

-Sarah Cascone, ArtNet News

Praise for Young Leonardo

“Modern minds think of Leonardo da Vinci as a fully formed genius, in the same way they might imagine Mozart, Einstein, or Shakespeare. But this satisfying book upends that cozy claim. It takes a corrective look at Leonardo’s first 27 years during which he was snubbed, struggled, and departed Florence thwarted and penniless. Duke Ludovico Sforza’s reception in Milan was disappointingly tepid, and major commissions went to artists whose names are now forgotten

Most books gloss over the fact that throughout the 15th century “the most important cultural endeavor in Milan was the construction of its cathedral.”  The authors depict Leonardo’s years in Milan from a new perspective: that of the Sforza court. They show how Leonardo’s career was forcefully shaped by the politics and intrigue of the period, and how much of the Sforza patronage was directed on vast projects such as the Milan Cathedral that favored a close circle of local artists to which Leonardo never gained entry. As a result, the authors claim, his exceptional talent remained unrecognized by the wider world right up to The Last Supper.”

Richard Cytowic, New York Journal of Books