Ultima Cena

Crespi painted this Last Supper around 1624 for a Benedictine monastery north of Milan, and he could hardly avoid the comparison: Leonardo's version was a few miles away, on a refectory wall in the city. He borrows Leonardo's clustered, arguing apostles but tips the whole scene up, seen from slightly above, the table set with real bread and dishes. Crespi belonged to a younger Milanese generation cutting away the twisting excess of Lombard Mannerism for something plainer and more direct. He didn't have long to develop it. The plague that swept Milan in 1630, the epidemic Manzoni later described, killed him at around 32. The painting reached the Brera after his monastery was suppressed in the Napoleonic years.