The Last Supper

Leonardo was commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, to decorate the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie around 1495. Rather than using the traditional fresco technique (applying pigment to wet plaster), Leonardo chose to paint on dry plaster using tempera and oil — a technique that allowed him to work more slowly and make corrections, but which proved catastrophically fragile.

The paint began peeling within decades of completion. The work has survived wars, floods, centuries of neglect, and a 1943 Allied bomb blast that destroyed three walls of the refectory. Each of the major restoration campaigns — the most recent completed in 1999 after 21 years of work — has removed later overpaint to reveal more of what remains of Leonardo's original layer, though some sections are almost entirely lost.