Print of Leonardo da Vinci - The cenacle or The Last Supper - 1494-1498
Leonardo da Vinci - The cenacle or The Last Supper
Year: 1494-1498 - mixed technique oil on plaster cm 880x460
Preserved in: refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy.
Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper, also known as The cenacle, commissioned by Ludovico il Moro, who had chosen the Dominican church of Santa Maria delle Grazie as the place of celebration of the Sforza.
Matteo Bandello, bishop and short story writer, recounted in the novella LVIII of 1497 how Leonardo da Vinci worked on the work: «He used to [...] go early in the morning to get up on the bridge, because the Cenacle is quite high from the ground; he used, I say, from the rising sun until dark evening never to take the brush out of his hand, but forgetting to eat and drink, to continue painting. He would then have been two, three and four days that he would not put his hand there and yet he sometimes lived for an hour or two of the day and only contemplated, considered and examined among himself, his figures judged. I have also seen him according to which whim or whim touched him, starting from midday, when the sun is in Lyon, from the old Court where that stupendous earth horse was composing, and coming straight to Le Grazie and ascending the bridge to take the brush and give one or two brushstrokes to one of those figures, and usually leave and go elsewhere. "
