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One of the most famous pictures in the world is the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci. Jesus sits at the table with his twelve apostles. It is said that the artist sought long for a model for the Saviour. He wanted a young man of pure, holy look. At length his attention was fixed on a chorister in the Cathedral, named Pietro Bandinelli. This young man had a very noble face and devout demeanor. Leonardo used him as a model in painting the face of the Master. Soon after this Pietro went to Rome to study music. There he fell among evil companions and was led to drink, and then into all manner of debasing sins. Year after year the painter went on with his great picture.
All the apostles were no painted save one – Judas, the traitor. Da Vinci went from place to place, looking for some debased man who would be suitable as a model. He was walking one day on the streets of Milan, watching the faces of the evil men he chanced to meet, when his eye fell on one who seemed to have in his features the character he sought. He was a miserable, unclean beggar, wearing rags, with villainous look. This man sat as the artist’s model for Judas. After the face was painted, Da Vinci learned that the man who had sat for him was his old friend, Pietro Bandinelli, the same who had sat a few years before as the model for the Master. Wickedness had debased the beautiful life into hideous deformity. Sin distorts, deforms and destroys the human soul. It drags it down from the erectness until it grovels in the dust.