The Christ-and-Judas legend
Leonardo da Vinci’s mural *The Last Supper*, the work at the center of the legend. Photograph/reproduction by LoganTheWatermelon, 2016; Wikimedia Commons file page licenses the image CC BY-SA 4.0. Credit: LoganTheWatermelon, Wikimedia Commons; link to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 and indicate no changes. Original page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Last_Supper_Leonardo_Da_Vinci_-_High_Resolution.jpg. Downloaded 2026-10-28 at 1280 px; no edits.
A popular story claims Leonardo da Vinci first painted Christ from a young church chorister, then found the same man years later, degraded and drunk, to model Judas. Art historian Ross King describes this story as a late-nineteenth-century invention: there is no reliable historical evidence that one person modeled for both Christ and Judas. An account published in 1554 instead describes Leonardo searching for a face for Judas and joking about the prior who hurried him; it says nothing about a chorister, a drunkard, or one model for both figures.