For three years Leonardo worked spasmodically on the Last Supper, and it was finished in 1498. The design had been most carefully elaborated. He started with the customary arrangement of the apostles in pairs, John in Jesus’ bosom—a refractory motive, and Judas in sinister isolation on the near side of the table. Almost by accident he fell upon the effective grouping of the apostles by threes. Then he set himself to giving in expression and gesture the maximum emotion that could be contained within a monumental design. He eliminated the old casual accessories and made all the lines of perspective converge on the face of Christ. He gave to all the figures a classical gravity, though admitting many varieties of age and character. Thus even in its ruined estate The Last Supper, Figure 154, is perhaps the most impressive picture in the world. The moment is that when Christ says “One of you shall betray me.” The arrangement is in five great balancing waves. From the Christ there is an outgoing gesture of resignation and love, from the apostles converging, incoming waves of horror, amazement, curiosity and indignation. Each undulation is double. Extended arms or pointed hands check the motion where it is excessive or connect the separate groups. Only Judas is out of the converging rhythm. He swings back defiantly pondering his part. Highly agitated in details, the whole is held within a noble and pathetic decorum. It is the very ideal of a Renaissance composition—dense, rich, energetic, varied, yet unified by a severe and calculated pattern which subordinates to its purpose the most diverse components. Raphael can only imitate it in the lower part of the Disputa, and monumental design ever since has gone to school with it. [Illustration: FIG. 154. Leonardo da Vinci. Last supper.—_S. Maria delle Grazie, Milan._ ] It was unhappily painted in tempera, not in oils as older accounts say,[55] on the dry wall, and it soon began to deteriorate. What we see today is merely the wraith of it, yet a wraith that imposes itself and moves us as few better preserved masterpieces do. In the year 1500 the French overran Lombardy, and, Leonardo, after wandering in Northern Italy and a martial episode as engineer for conquering Cæsar Borgia, returned, in 1503, to his native Florence. He is fifty and already in spirit an old man. His always limited will power has given out, he broods incessantly over mathematical and physical lore, wastes himself over fantastic inventions. His exhibit is only a cartoon, now lost, for a St. Ann. He makes portraits by proxy, but paints, himself, only under peculiar incentives. Such he found in the commission for a great battle-piece for the Priors’ Palace and in the personality of Mona Lisa. [Illustration: FIG. 155. Leonardo da Vinci. Sketches for the Battle of Anghiari.—_Windsor Castle._ ]