Ultimate Supper

Sister Plautilla Nelli was a self-taught nun-artist and the first-known female Renaissance painter of Florence, Italy. She was a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Siena located in Piazza San Marco in Florence, and was heavily influenced by the teachings of Savonarola and by the artwork of Fra Bartolomeo. She authored the only early Last Supper by a woman artist and signed her massive masterwork with a call to action: “Pray for the paintress.”

It was very unusual for the Renaissance masters to sign their works, but Nelli did it. She established an all-women workshop that made her convent self-sufficient. It was also illegal for women to study anatomy, but that did not stop Nelli from emulating Leonardo by tackling the life-size male, probably by studying the corpses of deceased nuns. Her workshop stitched together three twenty-one-foot canvases, and then constructed scaffolding. Wow! The Last Supper is situated now in the refectory of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

We can present Nelli's work today thanks to Advancing Women Artists (AWA) which is a US-based non-profit restoring art by women in Florence. You can find out more about their work here and read the story in DailyArt Magazine here.

See you tomorrow!