Join us for a talk by Dr. Jean- Pierre Isbouts on In Search of Leonardo’s Last Supper: Could Da Vinci and his workshop have painted a second version?” The program will include a presentation of the film Search for the Last Supper (produced by Pantheon Studios, Inc. of Santa Monica. Duration: 56 minutes.)
In 2014, Dr. Isbouts authenticated a recently discovered canvas as Leonardo da Vinci’s first version of the Mona Lisa, predating the Louvre version by at least seven years, which led to a BBC TV special in 2015. In 2017, Dr. Isbouts discovered records in Florence and Tongerlo, Belgium that show that a full-size copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco, now in the convent of Tongerlo, was actually painted by Leonardo and his workshop for the French King Louis XII. The exceptional quality of the canvas, with two figures arguably painted by Leonardo himself, reveals what the original fresco, now heavily damaged, once looked like. The discovery is described in his book Young Leonardo, published by St Martin’s Press, which inspired a film, The Search for the Last Supper, starring Alessandro Demcenko as Leonardo da Vinci. His next book on Leonardo da Vinci, The Da Vinci Legacy, is timed to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death in May, 2019.
Dr. Isbouts is a National Geographic historian and bestselling author who gained worldwide renown with his 2006 book The Biblical World, which became an international bestseller and is now in its fourth print. This success led to a series of National Geographic books, including In the Footsteps of Jesus (2010), The Story of Christianity (2014), The Archaeology of the Bible (2016) and Secret Societies (2017). His 2016 book Ten Prayers that Changed the World won the Best Spirituality Book Award that year.
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| Where | Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center |