r works of less genius and less reflection,
it is too often repeated....

It is sad to reflect that unfortunately even when the picture was
painted, its ruin might have been predicted from the character and
situation of the building. Duke Louis, out of malice or caprice,
compelled the monks to renovate their decaying monastery in this
unfavourable location, wherefore it was ill-built and as if by forced
feudal labour. In the old galleries we see miserable meanly-wrought
columns, great arches with small ill-assorted bricks, the materials from
old pulled-down buildings.

If then what is visible on the exterior is so bad, it is also to be
feared that the inner walls, which were plastered over, were constructed
still worse. This is saying nothing of weather-beaten bricks and other
minerals saturated with hurtful salts which absorbed the dampness of the
locality and destructively exhaled it again. Farther away stood the
unfortunate walls to which such a great treasure was entrusted, towards
the north, and, moreover in the vicinity of the kitchen, the pantry, and
the scullery; and how sad, that so careful an artist, who could not
select and refine his colours and clear his glaze and varnish too
carefully, was compelled by the circumstances, or rather by the place
and situation in which the picture had to stand, to overlook the chief
point upon which everything depended, or not to take it sufficiently to
heart!

However, despite all this, if the monastery had stood upon high ground,
the evil would not have been so great. It lies so low, and the Refectory
lower than the rest of the building, that in the year 1800, during a
long rain, the water stood to a depth of three palms, which leads us
also to believe that the frightful floods of 1500 also extended to this
place. It is to be remembered that the monks did their best to dry out
this room, but unfortunately there remained enough humidity to penetrate
it through and through; and they were even sensible of this in
Leonardo's time.

About ten years after the completion of the picture, a terrible plague
overran the good city, and how could we expect that the afflicted monks,
forsaken by all the world and in fear of death, should think of the
picture in their dining-room?

War and numerous other misfortunes which overtook Lombardy in the first
half of the Sixteenth Century were the cause of the complete neglect of
such works as the one we are speaking of; the white-washed wa