To paint the coats of arms of Lodovico Sforza and his two sons on the wall of the refectory, Leonardo needed to construct a system of scaffolding that allowed him to ascend to a height of more than thirty feet.This necessity of climbing ladders and working at altitude, often on awkward surfaces, was one of the reasons that a sixteenth-century artists’ handbook declared that fresco was not for “timid painters or irresolute persons.”1 Removed from the conveniences of his studio, the frescoist experienced physical discomfort and even risked a fall. Michelangelo would severely injure his leg in 1541 when he plunged from his scaffold as he frescoed The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel (he recovered, he claimed, thanks to self-medicating with Trebbiano wine). Much worse was the fate of Barna da Siena, who plummeted to his death while frescoing a Crucifixion in the Collegiata in San Gimignano.2Leonardo was intrigued by the mechanics of scaffolding. A few years later in Florence, according to Vasari, he invented some sort of scissor mechanism for a scaffold: “an ingenious scaffolding that he could raise or lower by drawing it together or extending it.”3 No drawings or descriptions of his scaffold for Santa Maria delle Grazie survive, though presumably it was less sophisticated.
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