leonardo painted the last supper in the 1490s on the end wall of the room where the friars of santa maria delle grazie in milan ate. he didn’t paint it in fresco, into wet plaster, but on the dry wall, in a way of his own, and it began to flake while he was still alive: in december 1517 a visitor, antonio de beatis, found it most excellent, although it is beginning to spoil.
in 1566 giorgio vasari could make out nothing but a blurred stain
, and said so while praising a friar’s copy, which would always bear witness
to leonardo’s art.
copies were made while it could still be seen. the one in the lens hangs in tongerlo abbey in belgium: kik-irpa, which photographed it, dates it around 1520 and gives it to the workshop of giampietrino, one of leonardo’s pupils. under its table, as in the other early copies, christ’s feet are there, side by side. two historians of the painting, pietro marani and leo steinberg, see the crucifixion foreshadowed in them, though they disagree on how the feet were set. (translations from the italian are ours.)
