A study of seven men for the Last Supper

A lithographic facsimile of a metalpoint drawing heightened with white now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA1846.151), where it is catalogued as by Raphael. This print was published in the Lawrence Gallery (1841, plate No. 4), a publication of thirty facsimiles of drawings by Raphael from the Lawrence Gallery (collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence) announced by Mr Woodburn in 1838 in the Literary Gazette. Annotated on the verso.

This drawing – depicting seven men at a long table – is a study for the representation of a Last Supper, although no more finished drawings or paintings by Raphael are known. Parker notes that: "some general resemblance at least may be observed with Perugino's fresco in the Cenacolo di Foligno in S.Onofrio, Florence, which is of about 1500; and the drawing [...] may in fact be by Raphael himself at a date soon after the turn of the century, and done under the influence of the S.Onofrio painting. Its purpose is unknown, and the fact that is squared for enlargement remains unexplained" (see Bibliographic References). For a photograph of this drawing, see RCIN 854071.

The Cenacolo di Foligno just mentioned is the fresco of the Last Supper painted on the walls of the refectory (now a museum) of the former Convent of Fuligno in Florence. The fresco – which also depicts the scene of the Agony in the Garden in the background – was discovered in the 19th century and initially attributed to Raphael, but now it is believed to be by Pietro Perugino. A number of scholars debated the involvement of the workshop in this fresco and the date it was executed. In a recent exhibition catalogue, Padovani attributed the fresco to Perugino, describing the involvement of the workshop as secondary and minimal and dating the decoration towards the end of the 1470s, before the frescoes executed by Perugino in the Sistine Chapel (c.1481-2). See Bibliographic References.

Ruland (1876) notes that the fresco was "in the former Nunnery of S. Onofrio, now in the Egyptian Museum, Florence". In 1855, the rooms of the Convent were used to accommodate the Egyptian Museum, which was later moved to its current location in Palazzo della Crocetta.