Exclusive interview with author Ross King and a review of his novel featuring Leonardo da Vinci and the Last Supper
Rating: 4 stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“The most important part of my research, and also the most entertaining part, was reading Leonardo’s notebooks,” says Leonardo and the Last Supper author Ross King. “I wanted to bring him alive as a character, and as a man, not merely as the larger-than-life genius that he has become in the popular imagination. Reading him in his own words meant I was able to give readers a sense of his interior life, and of his relationship with his friends and associates. It was amazing to find out that, like everyone else, he suffered from doubts and insecurities, and that he felt he had not accomplished enough.”
In 1495 Leonardo da Vinci was at a low point in his life. He was forty-three and had failed to complete a number of prestigious commissions. His biggest failure was not getting to complete a giant bronze horse to honor the father of the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza. The failure wasn’t his alone. Sforza needed the 75 tons of bronze earmarked for the statue for war. It was to be turned into cannons to help repel a French invasion of Italy. The commission to paint The Last Supper in the refectory of a Dominican convent was what he got in return. The problem was da Vinci had never worked on a large painting, let alone a fresco.
Author Ross King explores the complexity surrounding da Vinci’s life and work. King paints the picture of a complex man with complex religious beliefs. King reveals the stories seen in the painting and who the models were for the apostles. King also makes a claim that da Vinci is the model for two of the apostles. Looking closely at the food on the table in The Last Supper you can see da Vinci’s vegetarian preference displayed for all to see. Great for the anyone who enjoys biographies and art.
“I got the idea five or six years ago,” says King. “I was asked by an Italian society in London to give a lecture on the real story of Leonardo’s art in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Preparing the lecture forced me to look at the paintings again, very closely, and also to examine Leonardo’s life.”
“I realized that there was a fascinating story behind how Leonardo was commissioned to paint The Last Supper,’ says King. “We all know the image of the painting, but few people know the behind-the-scenes story of how it actually came to be painted. And the fact that it got painted at all was something of a miracle.”
“Just as I was getting close to the end of my writing, the National Gallery in London staged a huge Leonardo exhibition,” says King. I was able to view most of Leonardo’s paintings in one venue. The effect was overwhelming.”
“All of Leonardo’s writings have been published in good scholarly editions, so viewing them in the original wasn’t strictly necessary,” says King. “However, I was able to view two of Leonardo’s notebooks (the Forster Codices) at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. These were begun just before he started his work on The Last Supper. It was like seeing a piece of the True Cross.”
“Leonardo and The Last Supper is my eighth book, or ninth if you count a collection of Leonardo’s writings that I edited a few years ago,” says King. “I began my writing life as a novelist, originally publishing two historical novels. But my recent work has dealt with art and architectural history.”
King book Brunelleschi’s Dome won the BookSense Non-fiction Book of the Year in 2001, and The Judgment of Paris won the Governor General’s Award in Canada.
King was born in Canada, in the prairie province of Saskatchewan. “I grew up with wheatfields and big blue skies,” says King. “I live in Woodstock, a town about 10 miles north of Oxford, in England.”
Leonardo and the Last Supper author Ross King. Hardcover, 352 pages, Publisher: Walker & Company; 1 edition (October 30, 2012). Language: English, ISBN-13: 978-0802717054 $28.00
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