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Ludovico Sforza commissioned the Last Supper for the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in 1495. I worked on it for three years and ruined it almost immediately by choosing tempera on plaster rather than true fresco. True fresco must be painted quickly, wet into wet. I needed time — to observe the faces, to return to a passage, to reconsider a gesture.

The moment I chose was this: Christ has just said, 'One of you will betray me.' I wanted to show twelve different responses to the same sentence. Shock, denial, grief, calculation, loyalty, guilt. Judas is reaching for the bread but flinching backward. He already knows I know.

The painting began degrading within twenty years. By 1556 Vasari described it as a muddy blot. It has been restored, damaged, restored again. The Last Supper you see today is mostly other people's work. The original is visible only in the structure — the geometry of the composition, the positions of the hands, the logic of the light.