NO WINE? For his painting The Last Supper, Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci was paid with a vineyard that was bombed during World War 2. Wine made from grapes grown from clones of the vines has been bottled and is up for auction. Picture supplied
As payment for The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci's 15th century painting on the walls of the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle, the Renaissance man was gifted a vineyard by Lodovico Il Moro.
Leonardo is said to have loved wine and called it 'the divine liquor of
the grape'. For his work, Adoration of the Magi, he accepted as part payment a barrel of vermillion wine.
But Leonardo wasn't the only one to get bombed. In 1943, the Allies nearly obliterated his vineyard when they dropped an incendiary explosive on it.
Scientists and wine enthusiasts such as oenologist Luca Maroni have since located the vineyard and found the original vines' stumps. Vine geneticist Professor Attilio Scienza identified the plants' DNA as that of the grape variety Malvasia di Candia which is described as aromatic with the fragrance of fruits and flowers.
A team of experts recreated the vineyard from Leonardo's maps and the first vines were planted in 2015. They have now produced a batch of a white wine from the grapes and called it La Vigna di Milano, or The Vineyard of Milan.
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