Leonardo's Last Supper

This canvas celebrates The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned masterpiece painted between 1494 and 1498 in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, commissioned by Ludovico il Moro. Considered one of the greatest achievements of the Renaissance, the work was executed using an experimental ‘dry’ technique on plaster, which allowed Leonardo to achieve luminous effects and delicate transparencies impossible with traditional fresco. However, this technique soon proved unsuitable for the humidity of the refectory, causing rapid deterioration already documented in the sixteenth century.

The painting has undergone centuries of restorations, overpainting, and severe damage, culminating in the major intervention completed in 1999—one of the longest and most complex in the history of art. Today it is preserved and managed by the Museo del Cenacolo Vinciano, among the most visited state museums in Italy.

The commission arose within the broader renovation of the convent, intended to celebrate the Sforza family. While Donato Montorfano painted a Crucifixion on the opposite wall, Leonardo was entrusted with the Last Supper, into which he poured years of study on perspective, anatomy, and psychology. The writer Matteo Bandello recounts his irregular working method: entire days of uninterrupted labor alternating with long pauses of contemplation.

Leonardo profoundly renewed the traditional iconography by choosing the most dramatic moment of the Last Supper: the announcement of the betrayal, when Christ declares, ‘One of you will betray me.’ The apostles are arranged in groups of three, captured in their ‘motions of the soul,’ like emotional waves that spread outward and converge toward the central figure of Christ. He remains calm, bathed in a light that isolates and distinguishes him, while Judas, shrouded in shadow, clutches the purse of silver—a moral contrast that Vasari highlights with force and admiration.

In this compositional choice, Judas is not separated from the others but sits among the apostles, on the same side of the table facing the viewer. This detail heightens the narrative tension and makes the presence of the traitor even more striking within the group. Giorgio Vasari praises the painting as the supreme example of Leonardo’s ability to render the ‘motions of the soul,’ giving the scene a vitality that seems almost to breathe.

Because of the deterioration of the original, the large copy made around 1515 by the pupil Giampietrino plays a crucial role. Once kept at the Certosa di Pavia and, since 1821, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, it is fundamental for understanding the original appearance of Leonardo’s masterpiece.

ATTENTION!

DOES NOT INCLUDE FRAME.

DOES NOT INCLUDE WOODEN FRAME.