Considered one of the most beautiful churches in Italy and an obligatory landmark of Milanese Renaissance architecture, the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is linked to the name of Leonardo da Vinci and that of Donato Bramante.
It is considered a church, basilica and sanctuary, belonging to the Dominican Order and part of the parish of S. Vittore al Corpo in Milan.
It is classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site, together with Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, which is located in the refectory of the convent.
Santa Maria delle Grazie: history and origins
In 1463, the Duke of Milan, Francesco I Sforza, decided to have a Dominican convent and church built on land donated by Count Gaspare Vimercati (captain of Francesco Sforza’s troops) to the Dominicans, based on a design by Guininforte Solari, on the site of a small chapel dedicated to the Madonna delle Grazie, originally in Lombard-Gothic form, which was then incorporated into the church.
The church was therefore designed in Lombard Gothic style with a gabled façade, oculi, single lancet windows and the use of typical local brick, made of river sand and clay, fired in a kiln.
In the 1580s, Duke Ludovico il Moro Sforza decided to transform the church into the family mausoleum, following the new Florentine Renaissance style.
Thanks to the friendship between the Sforza family in Milan and the Medici family in Florence, two great artists then arrived in Milan, Donato Bramante as architect and Leonardo da Vinci as engineer. This opened a magical moment in the history of Milanese art and customs that is still recounted with emotion today.
In 1492 Bramante started the construction of the new tribune with the grandiose dome, covered by the tiburium (Lantern), followed by the old sacristy and the small cloister, and later the new sacristy and the large cloister.
In 1495, Leonardo and the artist Donato Montorfano were commissioned to paint the frescoes on the walls of the monks’ refectory: Leonardo chose to depict the Last Supper while Montorfano chose the Crucifixion, thus the beginning and end of Christ’s Passion respectively. The Last Supper was born.
The Moor decided to make the Grazie the burial place of the Sforza family and according to his instructions Cristoforo Solari made the lid for the tomb of Ludovico and his wife, Beatrice d’Este, to be placed in the centre of the choir.
Beatrice died in 1497 and was buried here, but the Moor’s programme was not completed because her dukedom fell two years later. Work stopped, but was nevertheless completed and the tribune, the sacristy and the Last Supper, finished in 1498, were saved.
The funeral monument of Ludovico il Moro and his wife Beatrice d’Este is preserved at the Certosa in Pavia.
From 1553 to 1778, the convent became the seat of the Inquisition tribunal and later, after the Napoleonic destructions, a barracks took its place.
In 1934-37, the entire building was consolidated and restored under the direction of Piero Portaluppi, but the bombing of 15 August 1943 hit the back of the church and the convent: only a few walls were saved, fortunately including the one housing the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.
Despite the terrible devastation suffered, the church was able to return to its former splendour thanks to the resourcefulness and spirit of initiative of the Milanese, whose commitment made it possible to recover the preciuos works of art conserved in the church, which has now become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Santa Maria delle Grazie: architecture and structure
The church opens onto a large square and consists of two distinct bodies:
- a front body by Solari, in Romanesque-Gothic style
- the rear tribune by Bramante.
The Exterior
Very interesting for the visitor is to admire the stylistic variety of the exterior cladding, characterised by the typical Lombard Gothic style for the façade and body, and with a variety of Renaissance elements (overlapping orders, loggias, trabeations, quadrangular modules) for the apsidal part with the Bramantesque tribune.
A harmonious fusion of the various parts of the building: a grandiose development of the interior space and a monumental effect of the exterior.
The Old Sacristy
From the rear exterior of the church, or from the interior after visiting the splendid Bramantesque tribune and the wooden choir, one enters the small cloister, known as the cloister of the frogs, because of the famous fountain in the centre, a place of meditation and silence for the monks and of great impact for the visitor who has always admired Bramante’s work.
The entrance door to the sacristy, which is often closed to visitors, opens from the cloister: a wooden hinged door surmounted by a monochrome lunette by Bramantino depicting the Madonna and Child between St James and St Louis IX of France, unfortunately now in a more than precarious condition.
Upon entering, one finds oneself in a rectangular room with a semicircular apse. Beautiful are the two long rows of 15th-century wooden cupboards used to store sacred ornaments that cover the base of the two main walls without interruption.
The Interior
The three-nave interior (63 metres long by 30 metres wide) with a cross-vaulted roof with ribs, has 14 side chapels with a square plan; striking graffito decorations adorn the cross vaults with figures of Dominican saints.
At the far left is the original prayer chapel, dedicated to St. Mary of Grace and incorporated at the beginning of the church construction.
In the lunette corresponding to the entrance of the chapel is a large stucco (chalk) composition, Our Lady of the Rosary with St. Dominic, St. Catherine and devotees (1632), indicating and reminding us of the main place from which the entire architectural complex originated. In the lunette, we can admire a painting by Cerano from 1631 depicting Our Lady of Graces freeing Milan from the plague. Inside the chapel, on its 17th-century altar is a pre-Leonardesque panel depicting the Madonna delle Grazie, the Virgin welcoming Count Vimercati’s family under her mantle, from the 15th-century Lombard school.
And it is precisely at this point that the Bramantesque tribune opens up.
The Bramantesque Tribune
This extraordinary space, built on the module of the circle inscribed in the square, inscribed in the octagon, recalls the great classical values and the origin of Christianity. Although it fits harmoniously into the overall organism of the church, it is a clear and precise departure from the purely Gothic style of the naves, without a transept, and still conveys a strong emotion to the visitor.
Bramante conceived the tribune as a cubic space, bordered by four powerful round arches, decorated with graffito and culminating in a large hemispherical dome, the first Renaissance dome in Milan.
On the four upper sides are depicted in roundels the Four Doctors of the Church: St Ambrose and St Augustine with the Mitre, Pope Gregory the Great with the Tiara and St Jerome with the Crosier.
The Choir
The tribune gives us one of the most beautiful wooden inlaid choir stalls of the Renaissance.
On the walls of the choir are six large figures of Dominican saints in marquetry: on the left St Dominic and St John the Baptist; next alone St Peter Martyr. On the right St Thomas Aquinas and St Paul; alone St Vincent Ferreri. Through a small door we exit into the small frog cloister.
Leonardo’s Last Supper
To the left of the façade, you enter the original refectory space, where you can admire the famous ‘Last Supper’, also known as ‘The Last Supper‘ by Leonardo, begun in 1495 and finished in 1498 of great dimensions (height 4.60 metres – length 8.80 metres) and emotional impact.
The painting was made by Leonardo on commission by Ludovico il Moro for the refectory of the convent of the Dominican church.
The Gospel episode is depicted in the dramatic moment when Christ, gathered with the disciples to celebrate the Passover, announces: ‘one of you will betray me’. Hence, the movements of the disciples’ souls, the splendid expressions on their faces, the movement of their bodies and hands that seem to vibrate in the eyes of the visitor, involving him in the eternal moment.
Contrary to the tradition that sees Jesus surrounded by the disciples, the artist chooses to represent Jesus at the centre of the scene, behind the rectangular table with the white tablecloth, symbol of purity, the bread and the fish, symbols of Christianity, while all around are the apostles, grouped in 4 groups of 3.
The figure of Christ has his head reclined, his eyes half-closed and his mouth barely ajar, as if he had just finished pronouncing the fateful sentence, in a gesture of quiet resignation, and forms the central axis of the compositional scene.
Let us see the apostles, from left to right, briefly in detail
- First group: Bartholomew, James the younger, Andrew with his hands raised in personal denial of the announced betrayal
- Second group: Judas, Peter and John the Evangelist; Peter grasps a knife in his right hand and, leaning forward impetuously, leans on John’s shoulder with his other hand asking him “Say, who is he to whom you refer?” (Jn 13:24)
Judas, in front of him, clutches the bag with the money (“holding Judas the till” we read in Jn 13:29), backs away with a guilty air and in his agitation knocks over the salt shaker. John the Evangelist, the youngest of the apostles with bowed head listens to Peter
- Jesus in the centre
- Third group: James the Older with his arms outstretched in sign of disbelief, Thomas with his finger raised towards heaven, Philip brings his hands to his chest, protesting his devotion and innocence.
- Fourth group: Matthew, Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot expressing with excited gestures their bewilderment and disbelief at what they have just heard.
Not to be forgotten: the three windows that allow a glimpse of the sunset light, a reminder of the trinity, and the landscape, the contact with the divine, the opening to a new vision of the relationship between human beings and nature, typical of the Renaissance.
Through the perspective expedients painted by Leonardo (the squaring of the floor, the coffered ceiling, the side walls), the perspective effect is achieved to the utmost perfection and is extremely captivating for the visitor. Leonardo fixes the vanishing point with a nail, found by the restoration team, right on Jesus’ forehead.
Another important element is the door, now walled up, that gave access to the kitchen; it was precisely the vapours from the kitchen that started the deterioration of the painting, for which numerous restorations were necessary, culminating in the excellence of the work of Pinin Brambilla Barcilon’s team that lasted 20 years from 1979 to 1999, which today restores the beauty of Leonardo’s thought.
The Last Supper ranks among the most important works of art of all time, both for its innovative charge and for the impact it had on artists of all ages. Leonardo intended to depict the ‘motions of the soul’ of the surprised and bewildered apostles at the announcement of the imminent betrayal of one of them.
The work immediately aroused admiration, to such an extent that Ludovico gave Leonardo the vineyard for the cultivation of Malvasia wine, now found in the Palazzo degli Atellani, next to the church.
It is necessary to know that Leonardo, intent on experimenting with new techniques, did not paint in ‘buon fresco’, the fresco technique normally used for painting on walls, but simply tempera mixed with oil placed on dry plaster, thus making it possible to lengthen the execution time, creating splendid nuances and extremely delicate plays of light and shadow.
On the opposite wall is the fresco of the ‘Crucifixion‘, signed by Giovanni Donato Montorfano (1495-97), under which Leonardo painted the portraits of the dukes with their children (Ludovico, Beatrice, Maximilian and Francis II), now disappeared. The scene takes place in Jerusalem and presents the cross of Jesus in the centre with the 2 thieves. Clearly visible here are: in the centre, the weeping Magdalene embracing Jesus’ cross, to the bottom right the soldiers playing dice on Jesus’ cloak, and to the bottom left Mary’s fainting spell, as well as the two crucified thieves.
Dan Brown’s vision
The author of the book ‘The Da Vinci Code‘ assumes that Magdalene was not a prostitute, but the companion of Jesus by whom she had a daughter from whose lineage the Merovingian lineage came.
This truth is kept secret by a society, the Priory of Sion, whose members include great masters such as Botticelli, Newton and Leonardo himself, who codified this secret in the painting.
In fact, the Holy Grail would not be a cup, but a member of the Sang Real, namely Mary Magdalene.
In the painting, the face of St. John has female features and is therefore indicated by Brown precisely in the Magdalene who, in her position relative to Christ, forms a V that leads back to the chalice and also to the female symbolism of motherhood.
There are various interpretations concerning the mysteries of the painting, certainly Brown’s has caused a considerable stir thanks, of course, to the famous novel and the related film.
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