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Lot Essay
Andy Warhol labored for over two years on his ultimate and final artistic statement. The Last Supper recapitulates a lifetime of groundbreaking artistic invention into a singular series serving as the apogee to the twentieth-century titan’s irreplicable oeuvre. Here, Warhol places himself in dialogue with Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the most famous artist in the Western canon, analyzing and distilling his masterpiece mural through hundreds of preparatory drawings and sculptural models in order to completely understand the Old Master’s famously complicated composition. The artist ritualistically spent an hour alone each day of the last year of his life in his studio meticulously drawing details from large projections of the Last Supper. “It’s a good picture,” Warhol deadpanned, “it’s something you see all the time, You don’t think about it” (quoted in C. Thierolf, “All the Catholic Things,” in Andy Warhol: The Last Supper, exh. cat., Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich, 1998, p. 34).
image.png image.png Andy Warhol with two Dominican priests at Last Supper, Credito Valtellinese, Stelline Foundation, Milan, Italy, 1987.
The results of Warhol’s years-long labors were exhibited at Warhol-Il Cenacolo, which opened directly across from where Leonardo’s painting remained in situ in Milan on January 22nd, 1987, exactly one month before Warhol’s sudden death. “Andy Warhol’s final and arguably one of his greatest series of paintings,” in the art critic Lynne Cooke’s words, found an immediately-captivated audience, with over 30,000 people attending the exhibition (quoted in J. D. Dillenberger, The religious Art of Andy Warhol, New York, 1998, p. 79). In Warhol’s contest against Leonardo’s enduring popularity, the Pop artist handily won, with one critic reporting “only two diligent Germans” who even bothered to view the Old Master’s original across the street in in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie (C. Schulz-Hoffmann, “‘Are you serious or delirious’—On the Last Supper and Other Things,” in Andy Warhol: The Last Supper, op. cit., p. 16).
Leonardo’s Last Supper is Warhol’s ideal subject, as a decade after completion, the fresco had already deteriorated enough from an unsuitable experimental binding method as to no longer embody the original work. Centuries of restoration and conservation exist alongside thousands of copies of the work, creating a cacophonous array of related images all purporting to represent an idealized yet nonexistent referent. The masterpiece is thus studied and understood more from copies than from the faded original fresco, a fact emphasized through Warhol’s choice of source material for The Last Supper: a clumsy photograph of a widely-circulated nineteenth-century engraving of the work placed upon a raven black field.
The present work is one of the series’ most original, haunting, and imaginative reflections on Leonardo’s Last Supper. Here, Warhol dispensed with the vibrant Pop backgrounds—blue, yellow, pink, or green—of the other works in the series in favor of a deeply saturated black. This choice first parallels his source imagery, replicating the black-and-white reproductions of the mural which Warhol obsessed over for the series. Simultaneously, the choice of color captures the original’s phantasmagoric appearance before it underwent a controversial restoration campaign beginning in 1978. Describing the Last Supper in 1850, the famed art critic Théophile Gautier wrote what could be an ekphrasis of Warhol’s black The Last Supper: “It seems to float on the surface of the wall, which absorbs it as a light vapor. It is a ghost of a painting. The specter of a masterpiece returned to earth. The effect is more solemn and more religious than even if the picture were alive. The body has disappeared but the soul survives in its entirety” (T. Gautier, quoted in S. J. Campbell, Leonardo Da Vinci: An Untraceable Life, Princeton, 2025, p. 27). The rapid degradation of Leonardo’s Last Supper caused the work to darken considerably, making it appear as if it were floating out from its support. Rather than despair at the fading of the irreplaceable masterpiece, aesthetes like Gautier celebrated the work’s present state, appreciating what remained. Warhol concurred, even signing a petition to cease restoration work on the mural. “I only know that it is a mistake to restore the Last Supper: it is unbelievably beautiful just the way it is!” Warhol proclaimed. “The old things are always the better ones and should not be changed” (quoted in C. Schulz-Hoffmann, op., cit., p. 11). Despite these protestations, restoration work was completed, and the Last Supper we see today is radically different from the mural which Warhol conceived of when working on his series.
Warhol explained to his assistant Benjamin Liu his goal of making Leonardo’s painting “exciting again,” stating: “it’s a good picture... It’s something you see all the time. You don’t think about it” (A. Warhol, quoted in B. Gopnik, Warhol, New York, 2020, p. 901). The artist aimed to achieve as close to an imitation of the original mural as possible, searching widely for the perfect photographic model for his work. While remaining fidelious to his source image, Warhol complicates the composition by doubling the image onto dueling horizontal planes, arranged one above the other. Christ and his Apostles now appear not once but twice, profoundly capturing the many dualities of Leonardo’s original. This action of duplication reenacts the dual reality of Leonardo’s masterpiece. The art historian Leo Steinberg emphasizes the “incessant” nature of the Renaissance mural, writing, “the Lord’s supper holds more than one still image can show” (L. Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, New York, 2001, p. 111). The master infuses his scene with a mind-boggling multiple doubleness, capturing both Jesus’s announcement of his betrayal and the institution of the Eucharist in a single frozen image. In Leonardo’s painting, “duplicity... is the essence of the object itself” (J. L. Koerner, review of L. Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, The Art Bulletin, vol. 84, no. 4, 2004, p. 780).
Leonardo’s duality deeply resonated with Warhol, who summarized his own two-sided approach, stating: “I like that idea that you can say the opposite” (A. Warhol, quoted in C. Schultz-Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 10). Warhol’s doubling and stacking of The Last Supper proves an innovative tool for extracting and reimagining the many dualities which Leonardo originally imbued within his composition, Warhol here achieving as well a deliberate conceptual manipulation of the one-point linear perspective into a multiplicity of perspectival effects. Leonardo’s painstaking placement of Jesus at the absolute center of the work is undermined and destabilized. Christ is present not once but twice, simultaneously negating and confirming the integrity of content and composition achieved in Leonardo’s original.
It is fitting that Warhol’s last silkscreen project would return to Leonardo da Vinci, as one of his first silkscreen works produced in the 1960s was of the Florentine master’s Mona Lisa. Beyond the symmetry of initiating and terminating his decades-long exploration of silkscreens with works after Leonardo, The Last Supper is also notable for its religious overtones, depicting Jesus’s last night before his crucifixion. Warhol himself was discreetly religious, attending mass weekly, and the theological component of Leonardo’s work must have moved the artist. Even more prophetic was the artist’s choice of subject—depicting Jesus Christ’s last earthly night would wind up being Warhol’s last series. As his definitive, final statement, The Last Supper is inextricably linked with Warhol, forming a veritable self-portrait of the artist. The work visualizes Warhol’s ascent as one of the greatest and most influential figures of the twentieth century, surpassing even Leonardo in fame. As the critic Arthur C. Danto enthused, “when [Warhol’s] Last Supper was displayed in Milan, in a kind of citywide two-man show with Leonardo, 30,000 people flocked to see it, hardly any of whom went to see the ‘other’ Last Supper... When the final multivolume Popular History of Art is published, ours will be the Age of Warhol” (A. C. Danto, Andy Warhol, New Haven, 2009, p. 167).
image.png image.png Andy Warhol with two Dominican priests at Last Supper, Credito Valtellinese, Stelline Foundation, Milan, Italy, 1987.
The results of Warhol’s years-long labors were exhibited at Warhol-Il Cenacolo, which opened directly across from where Leonardo’s painting remained in situ in Milan on January 22nd, 1987, exactly one month before Warhol’s sudden death. “Andy Warhol’s final and arguably one of his greatest series of paintings,” in the art critic Lynne Cooke’s words, found an immediately-captivated audience, with over 30,000 people attending the exhibition (quoted in J. D. Dillenberger, The religious Art of Andy Warhol, New York, 1998, p. 79). In Warhol’s contest against Leonardo’s enduring popularity, the Pop artist handily won, with one critic reporting “only two diligent Germans” who even bothered to view the Old Master’s original across the street in in the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie (C. Schulz-Hoffmann, “‘Are you serious or delirious’—On the Last Supper and Other Things,” in Andy Warhol: The Last Supper, op. cit., p. 16).
Leonardo’s Last Supper is Warhol’s ideal subject, as a decade after completion, the fresco had already deteriorated enough from an unsuitable experimental binding method as to no longer embody the original work. Centuries of restoration and conservation exist alongside thousands of copies of the work, creating a cacophonous array of related images all purporting to represent an idealized yet nonexistent referent. The masterpiece is thus studied and understood more from copies than from the faded original fresco, a fact emphasized through Warhol’s choice of source material for The Last Supper: a clumsy photograph of a widely-circulated nineteenth-century engraving of the work placed upon a raven black field.
The present work is one of the series’ most original, haunting, and imaginative reflections on Leonardo’s Last Supper. Here, Warhol dispensed with the vibrant Pop backgrounds—blue, yellow, pink, or green—of the other works in the series in favor of a deeply saturated black. This choice first parallels his source imagery, replicating the black-and-white reproductions of the mural which Warhol obsessed over for the series. Simultaneously, the choice of color captures the original’s phantasmagoric appearance before it underwent a controversial restoration campaign beginning in 1978. Describing the Last Supper in 1850, the famed art critic Théophile Gautier wrote what could be an ekphrasis of Warhol’s black The Last Supper: “It seems to float on the surface of the wall, which absorbs it as a light vapor. It is a ghost of a painting. The specter of a masterpiece returned to earth. The effect is more solemn and more religious than even if the picture were alive. The body has disappeared but the soul survives in its entirety” (T. Gautier, quoted in S. J. Campbell, Leonardo Da Vinci: An Untraceable Life, Princeton, 2025, p. 27). The rapid degradation of Leonardo’s Last Supper caused the work to darken considerably, making it appear as if it were floating out from its support. Rather than despair at the fading of the irreplaceable masterpiece, aesthetes like Gautier celebrated the work’s present state, appreciating what remained. Warhol concurred, even signing a petition to cease restoration work on the mural. “I only know that it is a mistake to restore the Last Supper: it is unbelievably beautiful just the way it is!” Warhol proclaimed. “The old things are always the better ones and should not be changed” (quoted in C. Schulz-Hoffmann, op., cit., p. 11). Despite these protestations, restoration work was completed, and the Last Supper we see today is radically different from the mural which Warhol conceived of when working on his series.
Warhol explained to his assistant Benjamin Liu his goal of making Leonardo’s painting “exciting again,” stating: “it’s a good picture... It’s something you see all the time. You don’t think about it” (A. Warhol, quoted in B. Gopnik, Warhol, New York, 2020, p. 901). The artist aimed to achieve as close to an imitation of the original mural as possible, searching widely for the perfect photographic model for his work. While remaining fidelious to his source image, Warhol complicates the composition by doubling the image onto dueling horizontal planes, arranged one above the other. Christ and his Apostles now appear not once but twice, profoundly capturing the many dualities of Leonardo’s original. This action of duplication reenacts the dual reality of Leonardo’s masterpiece. The art historian Leo Steinberg emphasizes the “incessant” nature of the Renaissance mural, writing, “the Lord’s supper holds more than one still image can show” (L. Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, New York, 2001, p. 111). The master infuses his scene with a mind-boggling multiple doubleness, capturing both Jesus’s announcement of his betrayal and the institution of the Eucharist in a single frozen image. In Leonardo’s painting, “duplicity... is the essence of the object itself” (J. L. Koerner, review of L. Steinberg, Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper, The Art Bulletin, vol. 84, no. 4, 2004, p. 780).
Leonardo’s duality deeply resonated with Warhol, who summarized his own two-sided approach, stating: “I like that idea that you can say the opposite” (A. Warhol, quoted in C. Schultz-Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 10). Warhol’s doubling and stacking of The Last Supper proves an innovative tool for extracting and reimagining the many dualities which Leonardo originally imbued within his composition, Warhol here achieving as well a deliberate conceptual manipulation of the one-point linear perspective into a multiplicity of perspectival effects. Leonardo’s painstaking placement of Jesus at the absolute center of the work is undermined and destabilized. Christ is present not once but twice, simultaneously negating and confirming the integrity of content and composition achieved in Leonardo’s original.
It is fitting that Warhol’s last silkscreen project would return to Leonardo da Vinci, as one of his first silkscreen works produced in the 1960s was of the Florentine master’s Mona Lisa. Beyond the symmetry of initiating and terminating his decades-long exploration of silkscreens with works after Leonardo, The Last Supper is also notable for its religious overtones, depicting Jesus’s last night before his crucifixion. Warhol himself was discreetly religious, attending mass weekly, and the theological component of Leonardo’s work must have moved the artist. Even more prophetic was the artist’s choice of subject—depicting Jesus Christ’s last earthly night would wind up being Warhol’s last series. As his definitive, final statement, The Last Supper is inextricably linked with Warhol, forming a veritable self-portrait of the artist. The work visualizes Warhol’s ascent as one of the greatest and most influential figures of the twentieth century, surpassing even Leonardo in fame. As the critic Arthur C. Danto enthused, “when [Warhol’s] Last Supper was displayed in Milan, in a kind of citywide two-man show with Leonardo, 30,000 people flocked to see it, hardly any of whom went to see the ‘other’ Last Supper... When the final multivolume Popular History of Art is published, ours will be the Age of Warhol” (A. C. Danto, Andy Warhol, New Haven, 2009, p. 167).