Heads of Apostles, after Leonardo, series of 6 works

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio is considered the best and most famous of Leonardo da Vinci's pupils. These six works attributed to him are undoubtedly the oldest directly contemporary copies made from Leonardo's fresco of The Last Supper, done in Milan in 1497. They are also evidence that Leonardo's masterpiece was already famous. Asked to make copies of his fresco on behalf of French patrons, the master is said to have commissioned Boltraffio to produce a series of drawings depicting the heads of Christ and the apostles.

Perhaps Boltraffio did not copy the fresco itself, but the preparatory cartoons of Leonardo kept in his studio. These six drawings reveal the expressiveness, beauty and delicacy of Leonardo's fresco, the details of which have long since disappeared under the ravages of time.