Image Details

Alinari/Art Resource, N.Y.

A melancholy, resigned Jesus, knowing his “time is near” (Matthew 26:18), presides over the Last Supper—in this study after Leonardo’s painting. Attributed to one of the Renaissance master’s students, the drawing dates to 1495, the year Leonardo began to paint the Last Supper on the walls of the refectory of the Dominican monastery Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Florence. The drawing, like Warhol’s image of Jesus on the cover of this issue, intensifies the focus on Jesus by isolating him from the twelve apostles and offers a fresh view of what has become a hackneyed image.