Conservation-restoration of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper until 1498. The scene is understood to depict the Bible verse John 13:22, showing the reactions of the Twelve Disciples, at the Last Supper, in the moments following Jesus’s announcement that one among them will betray him. When he received the commission for "The Last Supper", Leonardo da Vinci had never worked on a piece of this great a size, fifteen feet high by almost twenty-nine feet wide. He also had very limited experience working in the technique known as fresco, mixing pigment into wet plaster to create a permanent bond. Traditionally, fresco painters put down many successive layers of
The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci) in their victims. "The Last Supper" has been the target of much speculation by writers and historical revisionists alike, usually centered on purported hidden messages or hints found within the painting, especially since the publication of the novel "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown in 2003. Dan Brown proposed that the person to Jesus' right (left of Jesus from the viewer's perspective) is actually Mary Magdalene disguised as the Apostle John, being mirror images of one another. It also states that there was a letter ‘glaring in the center of the painting’ (M) standing for Matrimonio or Mary Magdalene.