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Note that this is a copy by Giampietrino, a pupil of Leonardo, not the original mural in Milan. For comparison, here's a high resolution version of the original

• laichzeit0 6y ago
  The original has probably ceased to be the "original" since about 1550 though. This copy is ironically closer to what the original looked like.
  • huskyr 6y ago
    Yeah, it's a miracle the original even survived, given that it was used as a stable, stones were thrown at it and the convent was bombed during the war. The 'Damage and restoration' section of the Wikipedia article is almost comical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)#Damage_and_restorations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)#Dam....
    • aosaigh 6y ago
      > In 1821, Stefano Barezzi, an expert in removing whole frescoes from their walls intact, was called in to remove the painting to a safer location; he badly damaged the center section before realizing that Leonardo's work was not a fresco. This made me laugh. I wasn't aware of its history. It's amazing how much effort has gone into preserving it over the centuries.
      • lou1306 6y ago
        Da Vinci's experiments with "frescoes" were tragicomical themselves. The guy really tried his darnedest to make frescoes as lifelike as oil paintings. Results: most of his fresco works are either lost or need a lot of restoration work.
      • klyrs 6y ago
        * use in a small and inconspicuous portion of the fresco before attempting to remove the fresco
    • dboreham 6y ago
      Don't forget that they chiseled a doorway into it too, in order to save a bit of time walking around the long way to lunch.
  • asjw 6y ago
    Even though it went through different restoration processes, the original is still the original Much like the Amphitheatre Nimes is not closer to the original Colosseum, even though it suffered much less damages over the centuries and had virtually no visible restoration (some of the Colosseum ones are quite bad honestly) The last supper importance is not just the painting itself, but also who originally made it and the history behind it.
    • Forge36 6y ago
      I don't see the argument as the second painting is the original, just that it more closely resembles what they original may have looked like. There are some recent art restorations which exemplify how much the art can change. Both pieces together add to the story.
      • chinesempire 6y ago
        I think that "it's not the original since 1550" it's an overstatement The copy was made at roughly the same time of the original, so it is a great reference for how it should look, but the techniques used for the original Last supper are so different that they are very different in terms of its importance and the difficulties to preserve it and the fact that Leonardo made it explain why the original suffered more damages throughout history (it was simply more famous) Like the Amphitheatre of El Jem, that was used to film The Galdiator, and the original Colosseum. We're lucky we have an almost exact copy to look at, that's for sure.
• js2 6y ago
  Funny you should mention that. I just watched this last night: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Copy_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certified_Copy_(film) British writer James Miller (Shimell) is in Tuscany to give a talk to a group about his new book, titled Certified Copy, which argues that, in art, issues of authenticity are irrelevant because every reproduction is itself an original, and even the original is a copy of another form. (As to the film itself, it got a little too serious for me.)