Inquirer review …

… How the brilliant slacker completed a masterpiece.

The Last Supper commission was not one that Leonardo sought; he may not even have wanted it. He had been working on a giant equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, father of the reigning duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, Leonardo's principal patron. That project effectively ended in 1494 when Lodovico took the 75 tons of bronze destined for the monument and used it to make three urgently needed cannon instead - "a sad irony," King writes, given Leonardo's "dreams of constructing instruments of war."