LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452-1519

THE MILAN YEARS While at the Milanese court of Duke Ludovico Sforza – also known as Ludovico Il Moro (‘the Moor’) – Leonardo turned his skills to court entertainment. He invented mottos, designed emblems and, to celebrate the wedding of Isabella of Aragon and Ludovico’s nephew Gian Galeazzo Sforza, created the stage set for a pageant called the Festa del Paradiso (‘The Feast of Paradise’), written by the poet Bernardo Bellin- cioni. He also designed a huge equestrian statue in honour of Francesco Sforza, founder of the dynasty, for which he made a clay model of the horse. During the last decade of the century, he was commissioned by Ludovico to paint a Last Supper for the refectory in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Leonardo’s workshop was joined by two outstanding artists and painters, Marco d’Oggiono and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio. Inspired by works such as the Lady with an Ermine and La Belle Ferronnière, they developed a magnificent style of court portraiture that broke with the Milanese tradition, preserving the black background but replacing the profile view with the more animated three-quarter pose. On 6 September 1499, the troops of Louis XII of France occupied Milan following the flight of Ludovico Sforza; Leonardo left the city at the end of the same year. Louis XII ruled the duchy of Milan until 1513.