Designed for a chimney breast, this splendid high-relief plaque is a masterpiece by the Ferrarese sculptor Arrigo Minerbi. Minerbi practised largely in Milan as of 1919, the years of so-called “return to order” and the Novecento movement. The plaque was shown at the recent exhibition – Forlì 2013 – devoted to the movement that took the name of “Novecento”. Minerbi published a photograph of it in an autobiographical volume similar to an illustrated catalogue of his main output. It appeared as plate LIX bearing a surprising error as to the year of execution (1938, whereas the terracotta is signed and dated 1941). The caption gave the original home of the plaque, Casa Nodari. This was a villa – no longer standing – built at n° 16 via Monferrato in the 1920s. Pier Giulio Magistretti and Emilio Lancio designed it for Ingegner Franco Nodari (the second architect’s face appears on certain postcards in the Archive of the Piero Portaluppi Foundation). In 1950 Piero Portaluppi designed an upper storey extension to the villa. The client, Franco Nodari, was Norwegian consul, which perhaps suggests an interesting tie-up with Minerbi’s Last Supper, the work that made his name in 1930 when he showed it at the Venice Biennale. This was bought by the Norwegian businessman, Einar Nillsen who donated it to the National Gallery, from which it finished in Oslo Cathedral in 1950.