For ordinary people in China, the so-called world famous paintings are nothing more than Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's Sunflower.

Leonardo Da Vinci's other top masterpiece, The Last Supper, has gained wider popularity by relying on American popular literature and the Hollywood film adapted with it, which is also one of the things that make people laugh and laugh.

In fact, "The Last Supper" this common religious theme painting has been painted by countless famous artists, but generally mentioned, it is always referring to Da Vinci's painting, naturally because its influence is too great.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and the film adaptation of it starring Tom Hanks
I happened to read Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005, when I first came into contact with this kind of suspense thriller and mixed with religious semiotics and other knowledge of seemingly high novels, I was shocked, and even once believed that the content of it was true, and thought that there was a lack of this type of novels in China, so I began to write my own idea.

After the travel experience in 2006, I accumulated a little fur, and in 2007, I really started to write, and turned the routine of the United States to save the world into the routine of the United States to harm the world and the Chinese male hero to save the world, of course, then it was nothing, and the routine of conspiracy theories gradually no longer felt reasonable.

In 2006, there was no such awareness, and the plan was to visit the 150 or so World cultural Heritage sites in Western Europe, of course, not leaving out the Church of the Blessed Virgin of Milan.

It wasn't two months in advance, it was only about a week in advance, but visitors were only allowed to spend 20 minutes in front of the mural and it was the same, and you weren't allowed to take pictures, although I did take one, but the quality of the equipment was really bad.

So the mural photos in this article are all from Wikipedia.

Now I hear that there are no restrictions on mobile phone photography, no flash is good.

Santa Maria delle Grazie, Church of the Blessed Virgin, is estimated to have hundreds of churches in Italy, and there are several of them in just the first two articles in this series, and this one in Milan was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1981, for a simple reason. Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper" is preserved on the walls of this church.

Other than that, this church of the Blessed Virgin is actually pretty unremarkable.

In the first part of this series, I asked the question: If there is a church with a painting in its collection, the painting is much more famous than the church itself.

Which church do you think this is? In this sense, the Church of the Blessed Virgin of Milan is even more exaggerated than the St Bavo cathedral in Ghent, which is, after all, a cathedral.

From the three-story structure of the main facade of the church, the materials and colors used, it is not difficult to find that there are many similarities with the Certosa di Pavia in the previous article.

From the year of construction to the designer, there is indeed a very close connection between the two.

In 1469, the then Duke of Milan Francesco I Sforza commissioned Guiniforte Solari to design and build a Dominican monastery and church.

Ludovico Sforza then decided to use the church as a mausoleum for the Sforza family, rebuilding the cloister and patio for this purpose, which was completed in full in about 1490. Around 1495 Ludovico commissioned Da Vinci to create the Last Supper as part of a project to renovate the building.

In 1497, Ludovico's beloved wife Beatrice died in childbirth and was buried in Certosa di Pavia together with Ludovico.

In 1474, born like Raphael in Urbino, Donato Bramante, or Bramante, came to Milan.

One of Italy's most distinguished architects introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan, which had a strong Gothic architectural tradition. Beginning in 1476, Bramante became the general designer of the Sforza family, and from 1492 to 1499, Ludovico asked him to complete the structure of the Church of the Blessed Mother, including the cross, the dome, the patio and the beams.

Some of the original plans are said to have been written by him, as his name is engraved on a piece of marble sent in 1494.

Of course, it is not ruled out that Giovanni Antonio Amadeo was one of the designers.

Both were later involved in the construction of Certosa di Pavia. However, after Ludovico was driven out of Milan by invading French forces in 1499, Bramante went to Rome, where he won the patronage of the powerful Cardinal Riario and was able to design St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, and his masterpiece Tempietto in 1502 marked the beginning of the Renaissance style of Roman architecture.