Last Supper

Andy Warhol
Last Supper, 1986
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

In 1986 Warhol's dealer commissioned the artist to create works based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous Last Supper, a fresco in the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. The artist had long been fascinated by the great Italian master and his enduring celebrity as a High Renaissance superstar. As early as 1963 he had silkscreened canvases with repeating images of da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

Warhol based his recreations of the Last Supper not on the much-faded original, but on modern commercial reproductions, such as a large white plaster model found in a gas station on the New Jersey Turnpike. The works were exhibited in in a Milan gallery adjacent to Santa Maria delle Gracie. "If visitors can't see the original Last Supper," Warhol said at the time, "they can come across the street and see mine." The exhibition opened in January 1987, only weeks before the artist's untimely death.

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All paintings, prints, sculptures, and photographs by Andy Warhol ©1998 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction, including downloading, and/or retransmission of Warhol's artwork(s) is prohibited under international copyright law. Users desiring to reproduce or retransmit the images must secure the appropriate authorizations.