The Last Supper

On the end wall of a former monastic dining hall in Milan, Leonardo da Vinci painted the moment just after Christ tells his twelve apostles that one of them will betray him. The news runs through the table like a shock wave: the disciples recoil, lean in, protest and question in groups of three on either side, while Christ sits alone and still at the centre against the windows behind him, his head at the vanishing point where every line of the painted room converges. Measuring about 4.6 by 8.8 metres, The Last Supper became one of the most studied and most reproduced images in Western art.

Leonardo worked on the mural between about 1495 and 1498 for his patron Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Instead of true fresco, which must be painted quickly onto wet plaster, he applied tempera to a dry wall prepared with gesso, pitch and mastic, a method that let him work slowly and revise. It was also the source of the painting's troubles: the paint began to flake within years, and by the middle of the 16th century Giorgio Vasari described it as badly ruined. In 1652 a doorway was cut through the lower centre of the scene, destroying the area where Christ's feet had been, and at the end of the 18th century French troops used the hall as an armoury and stable.

The worst threat came on 15 August 1943, when Allied bombs struck the refectory; sandbags protected the painting from flying fragments. A restoration led by Pinin Brambilla Barcilon from 1978 to 1999 removed layers of dirt and earlier repainting, recovering as much of Leonardo's own surface as remained. The church and convent, begun in 1463 with a Gothic nave by Guiniforte Solari and later given a Renaissance tribune associated with Donato Bramante, were inscribed together with the painting as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. Opposite the Last Supper, on the far wall of the refectory, is Giovanni Donato da Montorfano's Crucifixion fresco of 1495.

Getting there

The refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie is west of the historic centre of Milan, Italy. The nearest airport is Milan Linate (LIN), about 9 km away; Milan Malpensa (MXP) is the city's main intercontinental airport, further to the north-west.