It is turning into quite a year for seeing great works of art in a new light. First Osram relit Michelangelo's famous frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and now iGuzzini has tackled Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper in Milan. Both schemes, needless to say, have exclusively featured LEDs, in this case replacing a 15-year-old fluorescent scheme by Targetti. Aside from the obvious conservation and concealment issues, one of the primary challenges lay in approaching an iconic work where the portrayal and effect of light was of central importance to the artist. 'From a technical point of view, The Last Supper is an incredible experiment,' says Sandrina Bandera, director of the Lombardy Region Museums. 'Leonardo wanted to put in a wall painting the effects that the Flemish had begun to import into Italy of the representation of light. Light is Leonardo's reference point, his continuous research.' Several light sources are represented in the painting: three come from the openings behind Christ and the apostles, another is the original real window high up on the left wall in the Refectory and finally a light source radiates around the painting and seems to come from the room itself. 'The luminous effects reverberate on parts of the painting and reflect on others,' says Giuseppe Napoleone, director of Cenacolo Vinciano museum. 'The objective was to obtain a lighting system with uniform, not invasive light that helped viewers understand and get to know the work of art, highlighting each detail.
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