The Last Supper Trivia
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48 free The Last Supper trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper on a damp refectory wall in Milan using a technique that began failing within his own lifetime, and it has been flaking, flooded, shot at, bricked through and bombed ever since. This Last Supper trivia quiz covers the mural itself (who commissioned it, how the apostles are grouped, why Judas knocks over the salt, where the vanishing point sits), its four centuries of damage and restoration, and the copies, parodies and conspiracy theories it inspired from Dalí and Warhol to The Da Vinci Code. The last stretch turns to the meal the painting depicts: what the Gospels say, the institution of the Eucharist, the foot-washing in John, and the Cenacle on Mount Zion. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer is verified and cited to its reference page. If you enjoy this quiz, try our other art history and Bible quizzes.
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Q 01Which traditional feature of Jesus did Leonardo leave out of The Last Supper?
A halo
A halo is missing, yet the bright window and curved pediment behind him have been read as doing the same job, the room itself standing in for the usual gold disc.
Q 02Which Milan landmark houses Leonardo's Last Supper?
Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie
Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie: the mural fills a wall of the friars' old dining hall, a subject chosen so that they ate every meal in the painted company of Christ's last one.
Q 03In Leonardo's Last Supper, what does Judas clutch in his right hand as he pulls away from Jesus?
A purse
A purse: it is usually read as his payment for handing Jesus over, though it may simply mark him as the apostles' treasurer, the job John's Gospel gives him.
Q 04Which of Leonardo's patrons commissioned The Last Supper in the 1490s?
Ludovico Sforza
Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, meant the church to become his family's mausoleum, which is why his coats of arms fill the lunettes above the mural.
Q 05Roughly how wide is Leonardo's Last Supper?
About 29 feet
About 29 feet: the mural is 8.8 metres wide and begins well above head height, so Leonardo had to climb scaffolding each time he wanted to add a stroke.
Q 06Why did Leonardo paint The Last Supper on dry plaster instead of in true fresco?
To work slowly and revise
To work slowly and revise: fresco must be finished before each patch of wet plaster dries, but his paint never bonded to the dry wall and was already decaying within twenty years.
Q 07What fills the unrecoverable areas of Leonardo's restored Last Supper?
Pale watercolour
Pale watercolour marks the lost areas without pretending to be Leonardo's hand, the opposite of earlier restorers, who simply repainted whatever had flaked away.
Q 08In a famous anecdote, whose face did Leonardo threaten to give Judas in The Last Supper?
The prior's
The prior's: the friars' superior had complained to the duke that Leonardo stood idle for half a day at a time, and the duke is said to have laughed at the retort and taken the painter's side.
Q 09Which superstition about dining is often traced back to the Last Supper?
Thirteen at a table is unlucky
Thirteen at a table is unlucky: Jesus and the twelve apostles made thirteen diners, and the betrayer Judas is often counted as the fatal thirteenth guest.
Q 10How does Leonardo arrange the twelve apostles around Jesus in The Last Supper?
In four groups of three
In four groups of three: the number returns in the three windows behind and in the triangle of Jesus's own body, and in Christian art three often stands for the Trinity.
Q 11In Leonardo's Last Supper, what has Judas knocked over on the table?
The salt cellar
The salt cellar lies overturned by his right arm, though the detail has faded from the wall itself and is known today from early copies.
Q 12Which apostle grips a knife in Leonardo's Last Supper, a hint at his part in the arrest of Jesus?
Peter
Peter holds the knife: later that night, when the guards come for Jesus, he draws a blade and cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant.
Q 13In Leonardo's Last Supper, which apostle's raised index finger hints at a later Gospel episode?
Thomas
Thomas points upward, and after the Resurrection it is that finger he insists on putting into Jesus's wounds before he will believe.
Q 21What was cut through the bottom of Leonardo's Last Supper in 1652, destroying part of the picture?
A doorway
A doorway took away the feet of Jesus, which survive only in early copies, and although it was later bricked up its arch still shows beneath the table.
Q 22When French troops occupied Milan in 1796, what did they turn the hall of Leonardo's Last Supper into?
A stable
A stable: the troops' animals were followed a few years later by a flood, and the standing water left the already damp wall furred with mould.
Q 23What shielded Leonardo's Last Supper when Allied bombs wrecked its hall in August 1943?
A wall of sandbags
Q 14Before Leonardo's Last Supper, how did most painters of the scene single out Judas?
Seated him alone across the table
Seated him alone across the table: Leonardo broke the habit and put Judas among the apostles, set apart by the shadow over his face as he recoils.
Q 15Every perspective line in Leonardo's Last Supper converges on a single point, located where?
Jesus's head
Jesus's head: restorers found the hole of a nail that Leonardo drove in there, from which he stretched strings to rule every line of the painted room.
Q 16Which Christian sacrament re-enacts the Last Supper?
The Eucharist
The Eucharist: Jesus shared bread and a cup as his body and blood and told the apostles to do the same in his memory, so churches have repeated the meal ever since.
Q 17Which Venetian painter renamed his Last Supper 'The Feast in the House of Levi' after the Inquisition objected?
Paolo Veronese
Paolo Veronese was asked why a holy supper needed 'buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs' and was ordered to repaint it; he changed nothing but the title.
Q 18Which London institution owns a nearly full-size copy of Leonardo's Last Supper?
The Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts bought it in 1821, and the copy now shows what the wall itself no longer can, such as the feet of Jesus.
Q 19The friars who ate their meals beneath Leonardo's Last Supper belonged to which religious order?
The Dominicans
The Dominicans helped spoil their own masterpiece: steam and smoke from the friars' adjoining kitchen were among the things that loosened the paint.
Q 20What did a French king reportedly hope to do with Leonardo's Last Supper?
Take it home
Take it home: an early biographer says the king sought architects who could brace the wall with timber and iron and move it whole, giving up only because it was painted on the wall itself.
A wall of sandbags held while the roof and the room around it came down, leaving the painting standing in the open air for months before the hall was rebuilt.
Q 24Roughly how long did the restoration of Leonardo's Last Supper that ended in 1999 take?
20 years
About 20 years, several times longer than Leonardo spent painting it, because centuries of grime, varnish and other hands' retouching had to be lifted off one small patch at a time.
Q 25How long may each group of visitors spend with Leonardo's Last Supper?
15 minutes
15 minutes is all a small group gets, and only after passing through air-filtering chambers, because the breath and dust of crowds would raise the humidity that ruins the paint.
Q 26Where do the Gospels say Jesus and the disciples went when the Last Supper ended?
The Mount of Olives
The Mount of Olives: in the garden of Gethsemane on its slope, Jesus prayed while his companions kept falling asleep, until Judas arrived with an armed crowd.
Q 27Which artist painted The Sacrament of the Last Supper in 1955, with a blond, clean-shaven Jesus?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí set the meal inside a transparent twelve-sided dodecahedron, one face for each apostle, with the bay beside his Catalan home glowing behind it.
Q 28Whose Last Supper series, shown in Milan in 1987, was his final body of work?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol hung the series in a hall just across the street from Leonardo's original, flew home from the opening, and died a month later after gallbladder surgery.
Q 29In Matthew's Gospel, the chief priests pay Judas to betray Jesus with thirty pieces of which metal?
Silver
Silver: the thirty pieces became a byword for selling someone out, and in Matthew's account a remorseful Judas flings the coins back into the Temple.
Q 30Shortly before he began The Last Supper, Leonardo had to abandon which giant project for the Duke of Milan?
A bronze horse
A bronze horse: Leonardo had spent years on the monument to the duke's father, but with war coming the metal set aside for it was turned into cannon.