How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was 42 years old, he had­n’t yet com­plet­ed any major pub­licly view­able work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while work­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed pro­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal pro­ces­sions, masks, joust­ing tour­na­ments, and plays, for which he chore­o­graphed per­for­mances, engi­neered and dec­o­rat­ed stage sets and props, and even designed cos­tumes.” So explains gal­lerist and YouTu­ber James Payne in the new Great Art Explained video above, by way of estab­lish­ing the con­text in which Leonar­do would go on to paint The Last Sup­per.

For the defin­i­tive Renais­sance man, “the­atre was a nat­ur­al are­na to blend art, mechan­ics and design.” He under­stood “not only how per­spec­tive worked on a three-dimen­sion­al stage, but how it worked from dif­fer­ent van­tage points,” and this knowl­edge led to “what would be the great­est the­atri­cal stag­ing of his life”: his paint­ing of Jesus Christ telling the Twelve Apos­tles that one of them will betray him.

This view of The Last Sup­per makes more sense if you see it not as a decon­tex­tu­al­ized image — the way most of us do — but as the mur­al Leonar­do actu­al­ly paint­ed on one wall of Milan’s Con­vent of San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, whose space it extends (and where it makes more sense for every­one to be seat­ed on one side of the table).

Payne goes in-depth on not just the visu­al tech­niques Leonar­do used to make The Last Sup­per’s com­po­si­tion so pow­er­ful, but also the untest­ed paint­ing tech­niques that end­ed up has­ten­ing its dete­ri­o­ra­tion. If you do go to San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, bear in mind that at best a quar­ter of the mural’s paint was applied by Leonar­do him­self. The rest is the result of a long restora­tion process, made pos­si­ble by the exis­tence of sev­er­al copies made after the work’s com­ple­tion. And indeed, it’s only thanks to one of those copies, whose mak­er includ­ed labels, that we know which Apos­tle is which. Unlike many of the cre­ators of reli­gious art before him, Leonar­do did­n’t make any­thing too obvi­ous; rather, he expressed his for­mi­da­ble skill through the kind of sub­tle­ty acces­si­ble only to those who take their time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

An Immac­u­late Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Sup­per Dig­i­tized by Google: View It in High Res­o­lu­tion Online

Is the Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ing “Sal­va­tor Mun­di” (Which Sold for $450 Mil­lion in 2017) Actu­al­ly Authen­tic?: Michael Lewis Explores the Ques­tion in His New Pod­cast

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing?: It’s Not What You Think

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.