Who performed the first recorded restoration of The Last Supper in 1726?

The first recorded restoration of The Last Supper in 1726 was performed by Michelangelo Bellotti.

Bellotti was a painter hired by the Dominican community at Santa Maria delle Grazie, the Milan convent whose refectory contains Leonardo’s mural. By then, the painting was already flaking badly because Leonardo had used tempera and oil-based materials on a dry wall rather than the more durable wet-fresco method.

Bellotti filled damaged and missing areas with new paint and coated the mural with oil or varnish. The treatment concealed much of Leonardo’s surviving work and soon deteriorated. This is sometimes confused with Giuseppe Mazza’s later 1770 intervention, when Mazza removed Bellotti’s additions and repainted large sections.

Much later, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon directed the major 1978–1999 conservation campaign, which sought to remove later overpainting while preserving fragile original traces. That modern project is not the first restoration; Bellotti’s 1726 work holds that distinction.