The Last Supper

This is a copy after Leonardo da Vinci's famous Last Supper mural in Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. The original fresco, painted between 1495 and 1498 for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, began deteriorating almost immediately due to Leonardo's experimental technique of painting on dry plaster rather than true fresco. Numerous copies were made over the centuries to preserve the composition, as the original suffered extensive damage. This version is held at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, and provides valuable evidence of the original's appearance before centuries of deterioration and restoration.

As a copy, this work preserves Leonardo's revolutionary compositional innovation of grouping the twelve apostles into four dynamic triads reacting to Christ's announcement of betrayal. The one-point perspective converging on Christ's head and the dramatic use of gesture and expression that made the original so groundbreaking are faithfully recorded in this reproduction.