Leonardo and the RAF
One of the inevitable consequences of modern high-tech/low-accuracy warfare is damage to cultural heritage. On the eve of the second world war, the treasures of the National Gallery were evacuated to Wales, ending up in a disused slate quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog, and the ancient Scots coronation stone, the Stone of Destiny, seized by Edward I from Scone in 1296 and carried in triumph back to London, was taken from Westminster Abbey and carefully buried, the governor-general of Canada being entrusted with the secret of its whereabouts in case Britain should fall.
But transfer to a place of safety was not always an option. Sixty years ago this month, one of the most famous works of art in the world, Leonardo da Vinci's mural 'The Last Supper', irremovably fixed to the wall of the mediaeval refectory attached to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, came near to being destroyed when, in the small hours of 15 August 1943, in their third attack in eight days, 140 Royal Air Force Avro Lancasters dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on the city. The refectory was virtually flattened except for the wall bearing Leonardo's masterpiece, which was protected by a layer of sandbags behind a bulwark of heavy planks laid transversely from floor to ceiling.
This was not, in fact, the first encounter of 'The Last Supper' with the destructiveness of war. In 1499, only a couple of years after the painting had been completed, a French army invaded Lombardy and occupied Milan, and Gascon bowmen are said to have used the figures of Christ and His disciples for target practice. In any case, Leonardo had painted in an unfamiliar medium — oil paints were at that time a brand-new invention — on an incurably damp wall, and within 50 years the mural was already in decay. As the 19th-century critic Walter Pater wrote, 'About "The Last Supper", its decay and restorations, a whole literature has risen up. Goethe's pensive sketch of its sad fortunes being perhaps the best.' Between Pater's time and the RAF raid there had been more restoration, and of course there has been more since. Perhaps part of the magic of The Last Supper' is its constant defiance of the principle of the impermanence of the works of man.
At the time of the air-raid, British and American ground forces were in the final stages of the conquest of Sicily. Mussolini had been arrested three weeks previously; the Italian government, under Marshal Badoglio, was already looking for a way to ditch its disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. As it turned out, Italy's capitulation was botched, and the Nazis remained in control of Milan for another 20 months, so it is difficult to see what the Royal Air Force's blitz on the city achieved. At least it did not immortalise itself by adding Leonardo's Christ and Apostles to its list of victims.
A.D. Harvey
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