ABSTRACT
But it was Milan, which I expected to be drab – a soulless commercial/industrial centre – that startled and charmed me. The elation I felt on visiting the BBPR office was only a foretaste. The masterpieces to be found there were familiar from art history: a Raphael Cartoon in the Ambrosiana, Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pieta in the Castle – and Leonardo’s Last Supper, sombre and enigmatic, but not yet cleaned to its present ghostly pallor. I knew that it had been done in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Sta Maria delle Grazie, but nothing prepared me for the luminous harmony of its church, the chancel of which – as I was distractedly aware – had been attached to the low Gothic nave of the older priory.
