Jots & Tittles

First Look at Last Supper

After 20 years of painstaking work, the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” is finally complete—even though it took four times as long as da Vinci spent painting his masterpiece. The restored painting was unveiled to the world on May 28.

Da Vinci painted “The Last Supper” in the Basilica of St. Mary of the Graces, in Milan, at the behest of Ludovico Sforza, a Milanese count. Da Vinci’s experimental techniques and materials contributed to the painting’s deterioration after it was completed, in 1498. Over the centuries, humidity and pollutants also took their toll on the work, dulling its colors and collecting beneath its surface.

Pinin Brambilla led the team of restorers, who struggled to repair patches of flecked paint and to uncover portions of the original that had been besmirched and blackened by earlier, crude restoration attempts. Brambilla told the BBC that theirs was a “slow, severe conquest, which, flake after flake, day after day, millimeter after millimeter, fragment after fragment, gave back a reading of the dimensions, of the expressive and chromatic intensity, that we thought was lost forever.”