The Last Supper

The story of The Last Supper

Christ has just said that one of the twelve will betray him, and the table explodes. Leonardo painted the reaction rather than the meal: the apostles break into four groups of three, leaning, arguing, recoiling, one of them clutching a bag of silver. He worked on the wall of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan from about 1495 to 1498, using an experimental technique that started to fail within decades, so what survives is a ghost of the original. It is still one of the most studied compositions ever made, and the perspective lines all converge on a single point behind Christ's head.

On a wall, the painting is warm and architectural. The dominant colors are ochre, plaster gray, and faded terracotta, with blue and red in the robes and daylight coming through the three windows at the back. It is a natural fit for a dining room, which is what it was painted for, and it also works in a kitchen, an entry hall, or a home office with a long wall. It suits traditional, Tuscan, and transitional interiors. The image is more than twice as wide as it is tall, so go wider than you think: the Extra Large at 72 × 36 in is the size that lets you read every face, the Large at 48 × 24 in is right over a sideboard, and the Medium at 32 × 16 in fits above a buffet or a console.

Pair it with Leonardo's Mona Lisa for the two most famous works by one hand, or with the other great Renaissance walls, Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam and Raphael's The School of Athens. More from Leonardo da Vinci.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of the Milan wall after its 1999 restoration, so the losses and repairs are part of the image, as they are in the room.