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 (Ghirlandaio) another apostle appear to challenge Judas. Ghirlandaio was well known when he received the commission for this fresco, and soon after its completion, he was called to Rome to help decorate the walls Sistine Chapel. It is likely that Leonardo da Vinci was familiar with this treatment of the subject, as well as that of Castagno, and painted his own Last Supper in a more dramatic form to contrast with the stillness of these works, so that more emotion would be displayed. During the restoration of this fresco later, a preliminary sketch of it was discovered on the left wall