At the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, the devoted come to gaze upon the divine. Here, in this 15th-century church in Italy’s bustling second city, is the crowning glory of mankind’s greatest artist. The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci’s depiction of Christ’s final meal with his apostles, covers the entire end wall of the convent’s dining hall. The mural is huge—fully 29 by 15 feet—and, despite its fame and familiarity, remains breathtaking, even 520 years after the master first painted it. On a recent trip to Milan, I was invited to view The Last Supper. I knew it to be one of the most admired, most studied, and most reproduced paintings the world has ever known. But I had reckless abandon for one of the world’s most iconic paintings. To be invited, albeit for a 15-minute private viewing, was a rarified chance to appreciate Leonardo da Vinci and The Last Supper: only five people are allowed to view the masterpiece at a time, and it is booked out for at least two months in advance.  

But like any journalist, I was also aware of the painting’s pervasive mythology and the clues da Vinci’s brushstrokes allegedly created to provide evidence in a cover-up of the true identity of Christ by the Roman Catholic Church. Today, The Last Supper looks in arguably better shape than at any time in its long and turbulent history. It has survived occupations by invading armies, bombing by the Allies during the war, and numerous botched attempts at restoration from as early as the 18th century, until eventually, in 1999, Leonardo’s masterpiece was lovingly restored to the condition the artist intended. It also remains, perhaps as the artist also intended, the center of controversy, speculation, and bitter arguments between scholars, historians, theologians, and conspiracy theorists. 

The Last Supper is not simply a painting of Jesus and his disciples eating together one final time—it captures the defining crisis of their union, the precise moment Christ told his friends: “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” It is loaded with drama, tension, and symbolism.  Each of Jesus’ twelve closest followers reacts differently. To his left, James is outraged, throwing his arms in the air, while Thomas, raising his finger, appears to be demanding an explanation, and Philip leans closer as if he can’t believe what he has heard. Behind them, Matthew and Jude Thaddeus are the only two with their back to Christ, as they look to Simon for answers. On Jesus’ right, at the far end of the table, Bartholomew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Andrew appear to be giving what we might call a “double take” at the news, while in front of them, Peter has grabbed a knife and seems ready to physically protest, while Judas, the disciple who would betray Christ, holds a purse, and has knocked over a salt cellar—a punning nod by Leonardo to the Middle Eastern expression “betraying the salt,” meaning to turn on one’s master.  Which leaves only one figure—the most interesting depiction in the painting, and certainly the most controversial. 

Immediately to Jesus’ right – where one might expect to find Saint Peter, the de facto head of the 12 apostles and, in Christ’s own words, “the rock upon which I will build my church”—is a swooning, long-haired, androgynous figure, whose downcast eyes and expression of ineffable sadness mirror that of Jesus himself. Officially, this is Saint John, the youngest apostle, and commonly referred to (in his own Gospel, at least) as “the disciple who Jesus loved.” But is this delicate, mournful figure really Saint John?  

For many scholars, the person Leonardo sat at Jesus’ right hand was not John, or indeed any other man… but rather Mary Magdalene, one of Christ’s few female followers and the only one of his disciples who would be present at both his crucifixion and burial, as well as being the first to witness his resurrection. She—and not John—was the disciple who Jesus loved.  All of which raises the question: Why would Leonardo not only include her in his masterpiece, but also place her at the most exalted position at the table? 

Most modern viewers of The Last Supper will know Mary Magdalene from her role in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code, which not only claims the figure in the painting to be her, but also goes on to suggest that she and Jesus had a sexual relationship.  But Mary was already a central—and controversial—figure in the Christian church when Leonardo toiled in the refectory of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, 500 years before Dan Brown wrote his best seller.  She is mentioned more in the four “canonical” gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) than any woman other than Jesus’ mother, and more often than most of the other apostles. In the Gospel of John, she alone is the first to see the risen Christ – and is sent by Jesus to tell the other apostles of his resurrection, giving her the status of “apostle of the apostles.”  

She is also a central figure in the later “Gnostic” Gospels, ancient Christian texts discovered in Egypt in 1945, in which she is repeatedly referred to as Jesus’ closest and most beloved disciple and “the one who best understood his teachings.” It is these Gnostic Gospels that give added weight to the suggestion that Leonardo deliberately placed Mary, not John, at the right hand of the savior.  The second-century Gnostic Gospel of Philip contains repeated references to Mary as Jesus’ partner or companion, with one passage even claiming: “And the companion of the savior [was] Mary Magdalene. [Christ] loved Mary more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on the mouth.”  

Another Gnostic text, the fifth-century Gospel of Mary (so named because it is about Mary, not because she was the author) not only seems to confirm this unusual closeness, but also reaffirms Mary’s importance within the Church, with one verse relating an incident where Peter seeks her advice. “Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman,” he says. “Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember which you know, but we do not, nor have we heard them.” Those same Gnostic Gospels include other references to Peter feeling jealous, resentful, and even angry with Mary’s favored position in the eyes of Jesus. Leonardo would have been well aware of Mary Magdalene as an important figure in early Christianity—perhaps even the most important, after Christ himself. But he would also have known of her as a hugely divisive influence. The Church’s attitude to women was hardly progressive at the best of times, but in the sixth century, Pope Gregory I—perhaps reflecting Saint Peter’s own jealousy—falsely declared Mary to have been a prostitute. It was a slur that lasted nearly 1,400 years until finally being corrected in 1969—and it was only five years ago, in 2016, that Pope Francis allowed her to be referred to as the “apostle of the apostles,” for her role in witnessing the resurrection.   

Whether, as Dan Brown’s novel claims, Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s unusually close relationship culminated in marriage, and even children, remains unproven. But, given that Leonardo was also an exceptional scholar and that Mary was patron of the Dominican Order for whom the mural was painted in the first place, it is by no means unthinkable that, whether out of theological precocity, loyalty to the order who commissioned him, or just plain mischief, he would include her in his depiction of the apostles’ moment of crisis… and that, of them all, the “one who best understood” Jesus’ teachings should be the only one among them not to react with fear, shock, or disbelief.     

The Last Supper is not just artistically and aesthetically breathtaking, the towering masterpiece of the Renaissance era, and the greatest achievement of the world’s greatest artist; it is, like all Leonardo’s works, an example of his dazzling, and playful, intellect. From the hidden musical score formed by the positions of the apostles’ hands and loaves of bread across the table—which, with typical virtuosity, has to be read from the viewpoint of Jesus, or right to left as we look at it, to make sense—to the myriad signposts and hidden meanings inherent in his depiction of each of the apostles (Peter’s knife symbolizing his later anger in Gethsemane, Thomas’ raised finger foreshadowing his doubt of the resurrection, Judas’ purse and spilled salt), part of the enduring genius of The Last Supper is its seemingly endless capacity to surprise, intrigue, and inspire debate. 

Five centuries after he first painted his masterpiece, The Last Supper still holds one final, unanswered question that strikes to the very heart of the Christian Church. Who really was the “disciple who Jesus loved”? And could his portrayal of the demure, feminine figure at Jesus’ right hand, deliberately depicted as different to the other apostles, be Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest trick of all?