A work that cannot travel becomes an experience visitors can enter, guided by Leonardo's voice and perspective.
Amalart's role · Concept and development, experience design, content production and delivery at both venues.
The project
Before explaining The Last Supper, consider it through the eyes of the artist who imagined it.
The Last Supper is inseparable from the wall in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Its fragility limits access. In 2015, as Milan welcomed Expo's international visitors, the project offered a way to engage with the work for those unable to see it in its original setting. The experience was clearly distinguished from a visit to the painting.
Explanation gives way to a first-person narrative. Leonardo guides visitors through the composition, observing the apostles' gestures and expressions and describing his technique and creative process. Available in eight languages, the film establishes a direct relationship with different audiences.
High-definition projection presents The Last Supper at full scale, in the colours revealed by restoration. Giovanni Donato Montorfano's Crucifixion appears on the opposite wall, as in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Image, voice, sound and space restore the relationship for which the work was conceived.
For Leonardo, the eye is a means of understanding: to observe is to measure, comprehend and imagine. The project uses this idea to shape its narrative. Visitors follow how Leonardo constructs and questions what he sees, rather than watching a sequence of images.
Leonardo becomes the narrator, connecting his thinking to the choices within the work.
Christ's words travel across the table like a movement. Hands, glances and postures reveal the figures' reactions and the dramatic construction of the scene.
The dimensions, arrangement of the walls and presence of the table recall that The Last Supper was created for a place of shared meals. The reconstruction makes the relationship between work, architecture and function understandable, without replacing the original.
The programme extends to dinners, music and gatherings. Shared meals draw on the refectory's original function, turning the narrative into a shared experience.
The same idea took different forms in the two settings. In Via Vivaio, it was an exhibition open to the city. At Expo, it welcomed international visitors, schools and pavilion representatives, also becoming a place for building relationships.
At the Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano, the project reconstructed the refectory and hosted the multimedia experience, gatherings and shared meals for local audiences and Expo visitors.
In the Alessandro Rosso Group space, the reproduction, film and educational activities brought the narrative into the World Expo. Dinners with pavilion directors gave the project an international and institutional dimension.
In 2015, Leonardo's perspective guided audiences through a single work. In the following years, Amalart developed the same approach to explore his life, works, machines and the relationship between art and science.
This research is now taking permanent form at the Leonardo da Vinci Museum, Sanya, currently under development. The museum expands the experience for a new cultural context.
A work, an artist or a subject to develop into an experience. Our first conversation explores the narrative and form that can bring it to a new audience.