Plautilla Nelli, a sister of the Dominican monastery of Santa Caterina in Florence, Italy painted The Last Supper in 1568 for the convent’s refectory. When Santa Caterina, like many other religious institutions, was suppressed under Napoleon in the 19th century, Nelli’s painting was moved to nearby Santa Maria Novella, only to be later removed from its frame, rolled up, and largely ignored for most of the 20th century.
In the 1990’s the badly damaged painting came to the attention of Advancing Women Artists (AWA), an American non-profit based in Florence that sought to recover forgotten women artists and their artworks. AWA fundraised with the “Adopt-an-Apostle” program to facilitate the careful restoration of Nelli’s painting. After four years of restoration, Nelli’s Last Supper was rehung in the Museum of Santa Maria Novella in 2019.
Despite her relative obscurity in the 20th century, Nelli was recognized as a talented painter in her own time. Indeed, she was one of only four women artists that Giorgio Vasari discussed in the second edition of his influential compilation of Renaissance artist biographies, the Lives of the Artist.
Nelli’s painting depicts the Last Supper—the moment Christ announces to his apostles that one of them has betrayed him, a popular subject for Renaissance refectories in which monastic members would take their communal meals. Shock and dismay reverberate around the group as the haloed men react to the news. This climactic scene recalls three characters who, in the hours following the Last Supper, would respond in markedly different ways.
Nelli provided visual and iconographic clues to help identify some of the apostles. A halo-less figure sits alone on the front side of the table, physically and morally separating him from the rest of the apostles and thus identifying him as the betrayer, Judas. We also see that the traitor clutches a purse of coins in one hand, a reference to Judas’s reward of 30 pieces of silver for betraying Christ to the Romans (John 13:29). With his other hand, the informer reaches for Christ’s proffered piece of bread, another biblical reference alluding to his role in Christ’s inevitable death (John 13:26). In contrast, to the right of Christ, John is so troubled by the pronouncement he leans into the Lord’s breast with his eyes closed, seeking comfort. The older figure seated to Jesus’s right, bearded and with grey curls, fits conventional depictions of Peter.
As the Gospel of John ends, these three characters would respond in markedly different ways in the hours following the Last Supper. Peter would deny him; Judas would betray him; the beloved disciple alone would follow Jesus to the cross. Then in the post-Resurrection, just two remain: Peter, newly rehabilitated (John 21:15-19), and the anonymous beloved disciple, whom tradition would identify as John, son of Zebedee.
Sources
1 Smart History
2 VCS, Visual Commentary on Scriptures