Leonardo's fragile masterpiece: fifteen minutes, timed entry, and one of art's great survival stories.
Explore → Get Early AccessFifteen minutes, twenty-five people at a time, and the wall Leonardo turned into the most analyzed dinner party in history — the fading is real, and so is the awe. Book the moment tickets release; this is Italy's hardest room to enter and its most worthwhile.
Leonardo painted it dry (a tempera experiment, not true fresco) for Ludovico Sforza in the 1490s — technique's loss became conservation's eternal project. It has survived flaking, Napoleonic stabling, and the 1943 bomb that demolished the refectory around its sandbagged wall.
The 1999 restoration removed centuries of overpainting — about half the visible surface is Leonardo's own hand, the rest careful reconstruction. A door cut through the wall in 1652 amputated Christ's feet; the intact 1520 Giampietrino copy in London preserves what was lost.
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