The Keystone · Leonardo da Vinci, 1495–1498
The Last Supper
Leonardo refused the fresco painter's hurry. Instead of working into wet plaster he painted on a dry wall in tempera and oil — a decision that gave him time for unmatched subtlety and doomed the mural to five centuries of slow decay.
Look for the arithmetic of the table: twelve apostles gathered into four trembling groups of three, the moment after the words 'one of you will betray me.' Judas does not leap from the composition; he simply leans back into shadow, clutching his purse, the only face that does not catch the light.
In August 1943 an Allied bomb collapsed the refectory's roof and east wall. The Supper survived behind sandbags and scaffolding — the wall that held it left standing under the open sky.