Galeazzo Maria Sforza

The Last Supper was painted circa 1495 by Leonardo Da Vinci, and commissioned under Ludovico Sforza for the Dominicans of Santa Maria delle Grazie. From the beginning, the painting was considered a masterpiece and therefore, Leonardo was praised time and again for the technical aspects of his masterpiece. Vasari, the first man to write a book of artists' biographies, exclaimed, "a Last Supper, a most beautiful and marvelous thing; and to the heads of the Apostles he gave such majesty and beauty,

touching colors again, [was] angry that a boy should know more than he” (Vasari, 1). When Giovan Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, was dead, and Lodovico Sforza became duke in the year 1494, Ludovico Sforza gave assignments to Leonardo and supported him financially. His early assignments were to “execute pageants, plan the completion of the cathedral, plan irrigation projects, and design a statue of Sforza” (Da Vinci Paints, 1) While in Milan, he painted his first “masterpiece”,