It is not known whether Leonardo prepared drawings for engravings or was himself an engraver. The immediate success of his oeuvre is reflected in its influence on several 15th and 16th-century Lombard artists who sometimes produced replicas of his paintings, or produced others that evidently owned much to his style. These sources, apart from the Last Supper itself, lay in the mare magnum of Leonardo's drawings to which, perhaps, access could be gained through the connivance of one of his pupils. All the episodes of Christ's life have been interpreted in works of art. The Passion, however, from His triumphal entry into Jerusalem to His burial, has held pride of place, both in painting and in Bach's three "Passions". The Last Supper with its institution of the Eucharist, the unexpected announcement of the betrayal and Christ's farewell to his Apostles marks a point of no return, and the focus of deep emotions. Subsequent artists have realised this in their own versions of the subject.
The Last Supper, in fact, was immediately regarded as a milestone in the history of art, and the enormous impression it made can be judged from the flood of engravings and copies that spread like wildfire throughout Italy and the rest of Europe. In 1515, Giampietrino produced a life-size replica. Since all these reproductions were obviously made when the original splendour of the painting had not been impaired, they have guided the philological reconstruction of a work whose critical condition is due to both incorrect technical assessment on the part of Leonardo himself, and the damage caused by the passage of time and maladroit operations during the course of the centuries.
