The Last Supper
The Aesthetics of Leonardo Da Vinci's Great Masterwork
When the Duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint a depiction of the Last Supper on a refectory wall of the Dominican convent, Santa Maria delle Grazie, he could not have dreamed of the ways in which the painting would capture the imagination of not just academic scholars but the mass public over five hundred years after its creation. A painting which survived a bombing in the Second World War and was nearly lost due to a miscalculation by the painter himself has inspired authors and historians to pen theories about its meaning—the most popular and controversial being the claim that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and is the figure seated to his right.