The Last Supper

The Last Supper is Leonardo da Vinci's monumental depiction of the moment Christ announced that one of his disciples would betray him, painted directly onto the end wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan between 1495 and 1498. It is the most celebrated religious painting of the High Renaissance and one of the most studied works in the history of Western art.

Leonardo's composition is a revolution in narrative painting. Where earlier depictions of the Last Supper placed Judas in isolation on the opposite side of the table from the other apostles, Leonardo seated all thirteen figures on one side — Christ at the centre, flanked in groups of three on either side — and used the explosive psychological drama of the moment of announcement to organise the composition. Each apostle's response is individualised and legible; the painting is, among many other things, a masterclass in the representation of human emotion across multiple figures simultaneously.

The technical means are unusual. Leonardo painted in tempera and oil directly onto a dry plaster wall — not in the traditional fresco technique of painting onto wet plaster — which gave him greater flexibility and the capacity to rework passages. The cost of this choice was the painting's deterioration, which began within decades of its completion. The version visitors see in Milan today is a deeply restored approximation, but the compositional intelligence and dramatic power remain intact.

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