Recently, I attended the Web Intelligence conference in Milan, and I saw Da Vinci’s The Last Supper for the very first time.

I was never a great fan of Mona Lisa – having great disappointment with the very small canvas hanging in Louvre.  As a doctorate student in Paris, I could not understand what’s the big deal of that smile.  Even when I was fortunate to attend a lecture by the director of curator of Louvre, in which she explained in great detail the innovative play of light with the fine drawing — I still couldn’t bring myself to like Mona.  Sorry!

So I did not have great expectations coming to The Last Supper. The fresco has most part destroyed with the use of the tempura techniques – use of egg white and organic material – that did not withstand the age of time. However the restoration effort was quite remarkable.  Christ appears beyond sadness and the relief was coming through pretty sharp – the 3-dimensional mountains in the background and with the apostle Philip almost jumping out of the painting.  But I wasn’t quite in awe as when I saw the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Nonetheless it’s a great feeling to have stood in the same room as Leonardo!

After the visit, I picked up a book “Leonardo’s notebook” and read it during my flight back home.

I was just struck by the way Leonardo described how to become a great painter – First, you have to learn perspective. Second, you have to observe proportion. Third, you have to observe people and things around you and memorize faces to use later.

The guy is just downright disciplined!!! He repeated these steps in a number of different ways and in different context throughout his notes. I was so inspired by his thought process.  He uses mathematics throughout his notes, and recorded astute observations of the human face, types of nose, hands, proportion and physics of light and the scientific description of how things appears in human eyes due to the pupil dilation.

The notes are refreshing reminder of the fun stuff in engineering and sciences.