BOOK THE TICKET

PRESS ENTER / RETURN
TO BEGIN YOUR SEARCH

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]

The Last Supper
Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]

The Last Supper, painted between 1494 and the beginning of 1498, is considered perhaps the most important mural painting in the world, “a beautiful and marvelous thing”, as Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, in which he speaks of Leonardo and describes the Last Supper.

Painter, architect, sculptor, engineer, inventor, mathematician, anatomist and writer, Leonardo da Vinci embodied the ideal of the many-sided man dreamed of by the Italian Renaissance.
The Last Supper offers perhaps the most complete testimony to his multifaceted genius, urge to experiment and inexhaustible curiosity. In the period when he was working on the painting, the last decade of the 15th century, Leonardo was also busy with studies of light, sound, movement and human emotions and their expression. We find these interests reflected in the Last Supper, in which, perhaps more than in any other work, Leonardo displayed his concern to depict what he called the “motions of the soul” through postures, gestures and expressions.

“He also painted in Milan for the friars of S. Domenic, at Saint Maria delle Grazie, a Last Supper, a thing most beautiful and marvelous. He gave to the heads of the apostles great majesty and beauty, but left that of Christ imperfect, not thinking it possible to give that celestial divinity which is required for the representation of Christ. […]”

 
 
Giorgio Vasari, Lives [1550]

Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci, detail

Since September 1980 the Last Supper, together with the church and the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site as “a unique artistic achievement, of an exceptional universal value that transcends all historical contingencies”. Among the reasons we can also read that “The Last Supper has exerted a considerable influence, not only on the development of an iconographic theme but also on the destiny of painting” and finally: “it is no exaggeration to say that this painting opened up a new era in art history”.

Preserving this delicate painting and enabling the public to admire it is a daily challenge to the restorers, architects and art historians who look after it and use the finest technologies to ensure that the masterpiece is preserved and passed on to future generations.

Title The Last Supper
Author Leonardo Da Vinci
Date 1495-1498
Technique dry wall-painting
Sizes 460 × 880 cm
Location Refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milano
Backstage
MUSEUM

Backstage

Leonardo did not use the traditional fresco technique to paint the Last Supper and the lunettes. He chose a method that would enable him to paint on dry plaster and work slowly, so as to be able to make changes.

YOU MAY BE ALSO INTERESTED IN

Milano, Leonardo and the Sforza

Donato Montorfano
Crucifixion

Copies and derivations of the Last Supper

RESERVATIONS ARE COMPULSORY FOR ALL TYPES OF TICKETS
(*On Wednesday, March 20, starting at 12 noon, tickets for the May-June-July 2024 quarter admissions will go on sale through the usual purchasing channels)

For conservation reasons visit the visits last 15 minutes for a maximum number of 35 people at a time

Every visitor to the Museum
of the Last Supper

is part of an extraordinary
experience, also made
possible by the support
of all of you.

HOURS

From Tuesday to Sunday:
from 8.15 a.m. to 7 p.m.
(with last admission at 6.45 p.m.)

BOOKINGS

To guarantee everyone a safe visit,
in this first experimental phase,
the visits last 15 minutes for
a maximum number of 35 people at a time
Reservations are required.

INFO

Reservations* for the Cenacolo Museum will open every three months.
(*On Wednesday, March 20, starting at 12 noon, tickets for the May-June-July 2024 quarter admissions will go on sale through the usual purchasing channels)