How Art Restorers Ruined Leonardo da Vinci’s Masterpiece

After more than 500 years since it was painted, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is almost unrecognisable. Today, it is estimated that only about 20% of what Leonardo originally painted with his own hands still exists. The passage of time and the failed efforts of some of the world's best art restorers have contributed to the way the work looks today. Fortunately, we still have one made by Giampietrino, one of Leonardo's most faithful disciples who took it upon himself to replicate or rather to meticulously trace the painting of his master. Thanks to his work, we can see what The Last Supper once was, the Apostle's original gestures, the intricate details on the table and of course the central figure of the composition, Christ. However, between these two versions lies a small detail that restorers overlooked, a detail that was discovered a few years ago by a British journalist which eventually became a worldwide scandal. Because according to many experts, rather than recovering the painting, what they truly did was ruin Leonardo's original intentions. As you try to spot the detail I'm talking about between these two images, you might wonder, what exactly happened over these five centuries for this masterpiece to end up looking the way it does today? This man is Ludovico Sforza, also known as Il Moro and thanks to him, we owe the existence of The Last Supper. At the end of the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci was living in Milan under Sforza's patronage. By that time, Sforza was the Duke of the city and one of the most powerful men in Italy. His commission to Leonardo was simple in theory, to paint a biblical scene on the wall of the dining hall of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, where the monks ate every day. The idea was to create an image that would accompany them during their meals and remind them of the most human and tragic moment in Christian history, the instant when Jesus announces that one of his disciples will betray him. But for Leonardo, nothing was ever simple. He was not content with merely reproducing a sacred scene, he sought to reinvent religious painting. In this work, he wanted to capture emotions, reactions and the invisible drama of that moment. And to achieve it, he needed time, far more than what the traditional fresco technique allowed. Bon fresco was the classical method for painting on walls at that time. With this technique, artists applied pigments dissolved in water onto still wet plaster, and as it dried, the colour became chemically bonded to the wall, almost like a new layer of skin. But there was one major drawback, the plaster dried in just a few hours, and Leonardo, as we know, was not a man of hours. He was a man of ever-changing ideas, of doubts, of endless experimentation, the kind who could repaint a single face 20 times until it expressed precisely what he wanted. So, true to his nature, he decided to experiment. For this commission, Leonardo wanted to invent his own technique. Instead of painting on wet plaster, he applied a mixture of tempera and oil on dry plaster. The tempera would provide definition and precision, while the oil would add depth and luminosity. It was an ambitious experiment, visionary for its time, and for a brief moment, it worked. When Leonardo finished The Last Supper, witnesses said it looked like an oil painting, luminous and alive, as if the apostles were breathing within the wall itself. The tones were vibrant, the shadows soft, the faces deeply human. The result was so different, so modern, that many believed they were witnessing the future of art. But the wall was not on his side. The refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie had a problem Leonardo underestimated. Humidity. The wall he painted on faced north, exposed to the rain and cold air from the Alps. Every winter it absorbed moisture, every summer it released it. It was a wall that breathed, so to speak, and that constant movement caused the paint, which was not chemically fused to the plaster, to start peeling away. Leonardo tried to protect it by covering the surface with tar and mastic to seal in the moisture, but the cure turned out worse than the disease. The sealing layer trapped water inside the wall, creating the perfect environment for mould. Barely 20 years after its completion, The Last Supper was already deteriorating. Some fragments fell to the ground, and the darker areas were covered with a fine greenish layer. Even during Leonardo's lifetime, visitors noticed the damage. Antonio de Beatis, secretary to the Duke of Aragon, wrote in 1517 that it was already beginning to decay, and Leonardo himself, it is said, was aware of it. Perhaps that is why he never tried anything like it again. What an irony, that the man who sought technical perfection ended up creating one of the most fragile paintings in history, a masterpiece that began to die the very day it was born. Leonardo's Last Supper has been trying to survive for more than five centuries, not only against the conditions of the place where it was painted, but also against us. Over the years, the refectory hall where the painting stood changed its purpose so many times that the work lost every trace of sacredness. In the 17th century, the Dominicans built a doorway right below the mural, cutting off part of the table and Christ's feet. Later, the refectory was used as a storage room, a prison, and even a stable. Soldiers and prisoners slept in the hall, and some, out of boredom or indifference, threw excrement at the wall or scraped the paint off as if it were ordinary plaster. By the late 18th century, when Napoleon conquered Milan, his troops occupied the convent, the monks were expelled, and the refectory became a military warehouse. French soldiers stored ammunition and hay sacks right beneath Leonardo's masterpiece, and although Napoleon himself ordered the painting to be protected, his men continued to use the room, leaving smoke and grease stains on the wall. In the 19th century, restorers made their first attempt to fix it, but without understanding the condition of the wall or the original materials, they applied varnishes, oils, and overpainting that sealed in the humidity and accelerated its decay. The painting was now worse than ever, and then war came. Milan, as Italy's industrial centre, became a target for Allied bombings during World War II. On August 15th, 1943, a bomb fell directly on the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The explosion destroyed the roof and reduced the side walls to rubble. Yet, against all odds, the Last Supper survived. The only wall left standing was Leonardo's. The friars, foreseeing the danger, had reinforced the wall with sandbags and wooden scaffolding. For months, the painting was left exposed to the elements, protected only by a tarp. Rain fell inside the refectory, the wall soaked, dried, and soaked again. Each cycle was a new wound to the artwork, and when the war finally ended, what remained of the Last Supper was nearly dust. Most of the paint layer had flaked away, and what was left was coated with soot, mould, and residues from past restorations. Experts said that barely 20% of the original remained attached to the wall. Yet somehow, it survived. Now, among all the tragedies that have surrounded the Last Supper, there's an almost miraculous coincidence. Before the painting began to fade, one of Leonardo's most devoted disciples, Giampietrino, decided to do something that, unknowingly, would save the masterpiece for posterity. Giampietrino was part of Leonardo's circle in Milan. He had learned from him anatomy, light, proportion, and above all, an obsession with detail. Sometime between 1510 and 1520, he created an exact oil-on-canvas copy of the original painting when it still preserved its vivid colours and clear outlines. And it wasn't just any copy. It wasn't a loose reinterpretation. Giampietrino meticulously traced his master's composition, every gesture, every shadow, every fold of fabric, as if he wanted to freeze the mural before time could touch it. Thanks to this copy, today we can see what Leonardo's work truly looked like. Because unfortunately, what we see now in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie is no longer the mural of 1498. It's the sum of centuries, mistakes, and repaintings. By contrast, Giampietrino's canvas, preserved at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, could be described as a visual time machine. In it, you can still perceive the clarity of the original colours, the reflections on the silverware, the texture of the tablecloth, and the faces of the apostles before mould and war erased them. During the major restorations of the 20th century, this copy became the main reference. Restorers compared each figure to its counterpart on the canvas, trying to recover the lost contours and expressions. It was, quite literally, the map to reconstruct the world Leonardo had painted. But among those details, there was one that went unnoticed. A gesture so small that no one mentioned it for decades. A simple sleeve. Christ's right sleeve. In Giampietrino's version, that sleeve falls behind the table. However, in the 20th century restored version, the sleeve is no longer where it should be. When the restorers repainted over the missing sections, they painted it on top of the table, as if Christ's robe were resting over it. Depending on who you ask, it might seem like a minor change, but for experts, it altered something profound. Christ's posture. He went from being a figure containing his own inner tragedy to one that seems to reveal himself outwardly, changing a detail that Leonardo had carefully conceived in the original work. As I mentioned earlier, this error was discovered only a few years ago by a British journalist who digitally compared both versions, and when the art community noticed it, the impact was immediate. The media began to talk about it, and it was soon labelled not as a simple restoration mistake, but as a modern correction of a renaissance intention. I'd love to know your opinion on this. Do you think that saving a masterpiece also means transforming it? Or, on the contrary, do you believe that by changing even the smallest detail, we ruin the work forever? I'll be reading your thoughts in the comments. And finally, if you enjoyed this video and would like to support the channel, remember that in our catalogue, you'll find more than 700 artworks to choose from, so you can pick your favourite and decorate your home with it. Among them, I've included Giampietrino's version of The Last Supper, but I highly recommend browsing the entire collection because I'm sure you'll come across pieces you'll truly love. Shipping is free worldwide, and thanks to your support, I can keep creating videos like this every week. Thank you for watching until the end, and I'll see you in the next video.