Copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s "Last Supper" found in Vologda Cathedral

Certain variances from the original do catch the eye, for instance the different color of Judas robe.

The building served for many decades since the Soviet era as a regional art gallery, the mural being hidden behind wooden panels upon which paintings hung, being discovered only once the building was returned to the Vologda Diocese and restorations began. Experts are evaluating it as a true find.

“The artist managed to not simply mechanically repeat Leonardo’s composition, but to introduce his own color treatment. Indeed, this composition has its own attractiveness, color properties, and mastery of composition, which replicates the original. It’s not so easy to replicate—it requires a high level of mastery,” noted the chief researcher of the Pushkin Museum Viktoria Markova.

The practice of copying works, especially of the Renaissance, developed in Russia in the eighteenth century, when Russian artists were traveling to Italy and seeing these masterpieces firsthand. Presumably the mural was painted when the cathedral was restored in the nineteenth century and painted by Yaroslavl artist Alexander Kolchin.

Only one other Da Vinci copy is known in Russian churches—that in the altar apse in St. Petersburg’s Kazan Cathedral, dated to the early nineteenth century. “It is connected with the programme of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, which since the XVIII century has been teaching artists to turn to classical compositions," said Professor of Lomonosov Moscow State University Vladimir Sedov.

A comprehensive study of the mural is underway in the Resurrection Cathedral.

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