By the mid-16th century, The Last Supper had lost much of its original brilliance. The porous wall absorbed moisture from the convent’s kitchen, located directly behind it.

Book Review The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s By Paul Elie Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 496 pages, $33 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a ...

THE LAST SUPPER: Art, Faith, Sex, and Controversy in the 1980s | By Paul Elie | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 496 pp. | $33 Alexandra Jacobs is a Times book critic and occasional features writer.

In Paul Elie’s ‘Last Supper,’ the odd bedfellows of lust and faith in the New York art scene of the 80s.