48 Fun Facts About The Last Supper

Which traditional feature of Jesus did Leonardo leave out of The Last Supper?

A halo is missing, yet the bright window and curved pediment behind him have been read as doing the same job, the room itself standing in for the usual gold disc.

Which Milan landmark houses Leonardo's Last Supper?

Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie: the mural fills a wall of the friars' old dining hall, a subject chosen so that they ate every meal in the painted company of Christ's last one.

In Leonardo's Last Supper, what does Judas clutch in his right hand as he pulls away from Jesus?

A purse: it is usually read as his payment for handing Jesus over, though it may simply mark him as the apostles' treasurer, the job John's Gospel gives him.

Which of Leonardo's patrons commissioned The Last Supper in the 1490s?

Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, meant the church to become his family's mausoleum, which is why his coats of arms fill the lunettes above the mural.

Roughly how wide is Leonardo's Last Supper?

About 29 feet: the mural is 8.8 metres wide and begins well above head height, so Leonardo had to climb scaffolding each time he wanted to add a stroke.

Why did Leonardo paint The Last Supper on dry plaster instead of in true fresco?

To work slowly and revise: fresco must be finished before each patch of wet plaster dries, but his paint never bonded to the dry wall and was already decaying within twenty years.

What fills the unrecoverable areas of Leonardo's restored Last Supper?

Pale watercolour marks the lost areas without pretending to be Leonardo's hand, the opposite of earlier restorers, who simply repainted whatever had flaked away.

In a famous anecdote, whose face did Leonardo threaten to give Judas in The Last Supper?

The prior's: the friars' superior had complained to the duke that Leonardo stood idle for half a day at a time, and the duke is said to have laughed at the retort and taken the painter's side.

Which superstition about dining is often traced back to the Last Supper?

Thirteen at a table is unlucky: Jesus and the twelve apostles made thirteen diners, and the betrayer Judas is often counted as the fatal thirteenth guest.

How does Leonardo arrange the twelve apostles around Jesus in The Last Supper?

In four groups of three: the number returns in the three windows behind and in the triangle of Jesus's own body, and in Christian art three often stands for the Trinity.

In Leonardo's Last Supper, what has Judas knocked over on the table?

The salt cellar lies overturned by his right arm, though the detail has faded from the wall itself and is known today from early copies.

Which apostle grips a knife in Leonardo's Last Supper, a hint at his part in the arrest of Jesus?

Peter holds the knife: later that night, when the guards come for Jesus, he draws a blade and cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant.

In Leonardo's Last Supper, which apostle's raised index finger hints at a later Gospel episode?

Thomas points upward, and after the Resurrection it is that finger he insists on putting into Jesus's wounds before he will believe.

Before Leonardo's Last Supper, how did most painters of the scene single out Judas?

Seated him alone across the table: Leonardo broke the habit and put Judas among the apostles, set apart by the shadow over his face as he recoils.

Every perspective line in Leonardo's Last Supper converges on a single point, located where?

Jesus's head: restorers found the hole of a nail that Leonardo drove in there, from which he stretched strings to rule every line of the painted room.

Which Christian sacrament re-enacts the Last Supper?

The Eucharist: Jesus shared bread and a cup as his body and blood and told the apostles to do the same in his memory, so churches have repeated the meal ever since.

Which Venetian painter renamed his Last Supper 'The Feast in the House of Levi' after the Inquisition objected?

Paolo Veronese was asked why a holy supper needed 'buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs' and was ordered to repaint it; he changed nothing but the title.

Which London institution owns a nearly full-size copy of Leonardo's Last Supper?

The Royal Academy of Arts bought it in 1821, and the copy now shows what the wall itself no longer can, such as the feet of Jesus.

The friars who ate their meals beneath Leonardo's Last Supper belonged to which religious order?

The Dominicans helped spoil their own masterpiece: steam and smoke from the friars' adjoining kitchen were among the things that loosened the paint.

What did a French king reportedly hope to do with Leonardo's Last Supper?

Take it home: an early biographer says the king sought architects who could brace the wall with timber and iron and move it whole, giving up only because it was painted on the wall itself.

What was cut through the bottom of Leonardo's Last Supper in 1652, destroying part of the picture?

A doorway took away the feet of Jesus, which survive only in early copies, and although it was later bricked up its arch still shows beneath the table.

When French troops occupied Milan in 1796, what did they turn the hall of Leonardo's Last Supper into?

A stable: the troops' animals were followed a few years later by a flood, and the standing water left the already damp wall furred with mould.

What shielded Leonardo's Last Supper when Allied bombs wrecked its hall in August 1943?

A wall of sandbags held while the roof and the room around it came down, leaving the painting standing in the open air for months before the hall was rebuilt.

Roughly how long did the restoration of Leonardo's Last Supper that ended in 1999 take?

About 20 years, several times longer than Leonardo spent painting it, because centuries of grime, varnish and other hands' retouching had to be lifted off one small patch at a time.

How long may each group of visitors spend with Leonardo's Last Supper?

15 minutes is all a small group gets, and only after passing through air-filtering chambers, because the breath and dust of crowds would raise the humidity that ruins the paint.

Where do the Gospels say Jesus and the disciples went when the Last Supper ended?

The Mount of Olives: in the garden of Gethsemane on its slope, Jesus prayed while his companions kept falling asleep, until Judas arrived with an armed crowd.

Which artist painted The Sacrament of the Last Supper in 1955, with a blond, clean-shaven Jesus?

Salvador Dalí set the meal inside a transparent twelve-sided dodecahedron, one face for each apostle, with the bay beside his Catalan home glowing behind it.

Whose Last Supper series, shown in Milan in 1987, was his final body of work?

Andy Warhol hung the series in a hall just across the street from Leonardo's original, flew home from the opening, and died a month later after gallbladder surgery.

In Matthew's Gospel, the chief priests pay Judas to betray Jesus with thirty pieces of which metal?

Silver: the thirty pieces became a byword for selling someone out, and in Matthew's account a remorseful Judas flings the coins back into the Temple.

Shortly before he began The Last Supper, Leonardo had to abandon which giant project for the Duke of Milan?

A bronze horse: Leonardo had spent years on the monument to the duke's father, but with war coming the metal set aside for it was turned into cannon.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code claims the figure at Jesus's right hand in The Last Supper is really whom?

Mary Magdalene is the novel's claim, but art historians identify the swooning, beardless figure as John, the youngest of the apostles.

In Grail legend, who uses the cup from the Last Supper to catch Christ's blood at Calvary?

Joseph of Arimathea only buries Jesus in the Gospels; a French poet, Robert de Boron, handed him the cup around 1200 and so tied the Grail to the supper.

On which day of Holy Week do Christians commemorate the Last Supper?

Maundy Thursday is thought to take its name from mandatum, Latin for the 'new commandment' to love one another that Jesus gives his disciples at the meal.

The earliest known account of the Last Supper comes from outside the Gospels, in which New Testament book?

1 Corinthians: Paul wrote the letter around the year 55, probably before any Gospel was written, and records the words over the bread and cup as something he had himself received and passed on.

At the Last Supper in John's Gospel, what does Jesus do that the other three Gospels leave out?

Washes the apostles' feet: he gets up during supper, ties a towel round his waist and does a servant's work, a scene that priests and popes still re-enact each year.

During which festival week do the Gospels place the Last Supper?

Passover: Matthew, Mark and Luke present the supper as the festival meal itself, though John's timing of Jesus's death implies it was eaten before the feast began.

Jesus warns an apostle he will deny him three times before which sound?

A cockcrow: the apostle swore he would sooner die, yet by dawn he had three times denied knowing Jesus, and at the bird's cry he went out and wept.

What is the traditional Jerusalem site of the Last Supper called?

The Cenacle sits above the shrine venerated as King David's tomb, and after the Ottomans took Jerusalem it served as a mosque, whose prayer niche is still in the wall.

What do Eastern Orthodox Christians call the Last Supper?

The Mystical Supper is also the name of its icon, which many Orthodox churches hang above the central gates of the icon screen, so it faces the congregation through every service.

Whose Last Supper, painted for a church in Venice, sets the table on a steep diagonal among servants carrying dishes?

Tintoretto's huge canvas is everything Leonardo's is not: a table plunging away at an angle, a smoking lamp, a cat nosing at a basket and angels swirling in the dark.

Which scene, frescoed by Donato Montorfano, covers the wall facing Leonardo's Last Supper?

The Crucifixion was painted in true fresco and is still well preserved, while the portraits of the duke's family that Leonardo is thought to have added in his own dry method have all but flaked away.

In Mark's Gospel, the disciples sent to prepare the Last Supper find the house by following a man carrying what?

A water jar: the man leads them to a householder, who shows them a large upstairs room already furnished, and there they get the meal ready.

Which 16th-century writer visited Leonardo's Last Supper and reported that nothing could be seen but a blurred stain?

Giorgio Vasari saw it in 1566, less than seventy years after it was finished, though his own Lives had praised it as a 'most beautiful and marvellous thing'.

An eyewitness recalled Leonardo painting The Last Supper from dawn till dusk without once stopping to do what?

Eat or drink: yet the same witness, the writer Matteo Bandello, also saw him go three or four days without lifting a brush, coming only to stand and stare at his figures.

In Luke's account of the Last Supper, what do the apostles start arguing about at the table?

Which of them is greatest: Jesus cuts the quarrel short by telling them that the greatest must behave like the youngest, and the one who leads like one who serves.

Which writer's essay on the decay of Leonardo's Last Supper describes the flood of 1800 that filled its hall?

Goethe traced the painting's ruin step by step: the water stood in the hall, upwards of two feet deep by one account, and the soaked wall bloomed with mould from end to end.

The life-size mosaic copy of Leonardo's Last Supper in a Vienna church was originally made for which foreign ruler?

Napoleon Bonaparte fell before the mosaic was finished, so the Austrian emperor bought it for a palace, and his successor passed it to the church where it hangs.

Leonardo's red-chalk study for the head of Judas in The Last Supper belongs to which collection?

The Royal Library at Windsor Castle keeps the drawing, which preserves the head as Leonardo designed it; on the wall itself, later restorers repainted and altered the face of Judas.