Early Trompe-l’oeil Effects in the Last Supper Depictions by Domenico Ghirlandaio

The many frescoes showing the Last Supper of Jesus and the Apostles painted in Florence in the Renaissance have already been studied at length by art historians. However they have never been analyzed and investigated from the point of view of the relationship between art and perspective science, and the relationship between the shape of the room that they decorate and the shape of the space that they depict. Perspective science was being mathematically codified and put into written words by Piero della Francesca in the very days in which Domenico Ghirlandaio painted two frescoes in the convents of San Marco and Ognissanti. We can thus consider Ghirlandaio’s paintings as being pioneering art works that mark a turning point in this artistic genre, and we will try to understand how and to what extent he mastered the trompe l’oeil effects that he produced.