A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

1519) numerous commissions, including painting The Last Supper (see Plate 8.6 on

pp. 312–13) on one of the walls of the dining hall of a Dominican convent. Here

Leonardo demonstrated his mastery of the relatively new science of linear

perspective: the hall sheltering Christ and his disciples seems to recede as its walls

approach a vanishing point. On the opposite side of the hall, Leonardo added a fresco

(now nearly obliterated) of his patron: Ludovico, his wife, and their two children

kneeling before an image of the Crucifixion.

Plate 8.6: Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper (1494–1497). Leonardo first made his reputation with this
painting, which evokes the precise moment when Christ said to his feasting apostles, “One of you is about
to betray me.” All the apostles react with horror and surprise, but the guilty Judas recoils, his face in
shadows. Compare this depiction with the same moment in the Romanesque painting of Plate 5.4 on p. 183.

These were religious themes, but Ludovico sponsored classical ones as well,

some woven into the very fabric of courtly life. At one of his banquets in 1491, for

example, boiled fish were presented under covers consisting “of a model of the

Coliseum lavishly decorated with gold and mottoes,” while a dessert arrived under

“ornate lids in gold, in the Royal manner, depicting Rome triumphant with an ox, who

together vow never to part, and this represents justice, temperance and great