Last Supper, The, is a famous painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. The painting was completed about 1497. It shows the final meal of Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles. Jesus has just announced that one of them will betray him. Leonardo created the scene on a wall of the dining room in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy.
When painting The Last Supper, Leonardo rejected the fresco technique normally used for wallpaintings. The technique requires an artist to mix dry pigments with water and brush them onto damp, freshly laid plaster. An artist using the fresco method must work quickly. Leonardo wanted to paint slowly, to revise his work, and to use shadows—all of which would have been impossible in fresco painting.
Leonardo developed a new technique that involved coating the wall with a compound he had created. The compound was supposed to hold the paint in place and protect it from moisture. But it did not work. Soon after Leonardo completed the picture, the paint began to flake away. The Last Supper still exists, but in poor condition, despite being extensively restored during the 1990’s.
Leonardo changed the traditional arrangement of the figures in the scene. Jesus and his apostles are usually shown in a line. Judas, the betrayer, is usually set apart in some way. Leonardo painted the apostles in several small groups. Each apostle reacts in a different way to Jesus’s announcement that one of them will betray him. Jesus sits in the center of the scene, apart from the other figures. Leonardo’s composition creates a more active design than other artists had achieved.
See also Leonardo da Vinci .
