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
SS Leonardo da Vinci (1960) "Leonardo da Vinci" returned to her original route for a short period until June 1976, when she too was withdrawn from service and laid up. In 1977 the "Leonardo da Vinci" was brought back into service, this time for cruising under the banner of Italia Crociere (also known as Italian Line Cruises), a newly formed subsidiary of the Italian Line. The ship was used on one-night cruises from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas, but proved unnecessarily large and too expensive to operate on a service of that kind. On 23 September 1978 the "Leonardo da Vinci" returned to La Spezia, Italy