Leonardo da Vinci

April 15^th is the birthday of Leonard da Vinci.  The year was 1452, so 2012 marks the 550^th anniversary of his birth.  Connection to Scott?  Tenuous, at best.  Unless you’re a "Da Vinci Code" fan.  But Ms. Rosina Drew, possibly the last living person to have met Scott, celebrated her 100^th birthday (in 1911) by presenting a communion table to the Rhu parish church, which included an image of da Vinci’s Last Supper.  The story is a recent one, published in Helensburgh Heritage.

From Donald Fullerton’s article, with a link to the full text here: 

http://www.helensburgh-heritage.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=893:centenarian-knew-sir-walter-scott&catid=39:people-&Itemid=399

‘FLAGS were at half-mast throughout Helensburgh and Rhu when a much-loved centenarian died at what is now the Ardencaple Hotel.

In the summer of 2011 a photo of Rosina Drew when she was 100 turned up in the United States after a house in the Kansas-Missouri area was cleared, and hers is a fascinating story.

She was born Rosina Elizabeth Douglas on August 31 1811, daughter of master mariner William Douglas and his wife Rosina Service, at their Troon home — almost a year before Henry Bell’s Comet began to ply on the Clyde and four years before the battle of Waterloo.

She spent much of her youth with her widowed aunt, Mrs Gilbert Douglas, at Orbiston in Lanarkshire.

One of the reasons she was well known in later life was because when she was 18 she met literary giant Sir Walter Scott.

He paid a three or four day visit to her aunt in Orbiston, and the young Miss Douglas was delighted to be old enough to be included in the dinner party invited to meet the distinguished guest, who seemed happy and in almost boyish spirits…

To mark her 100^th birthday she presented the current communion table in Rhu Parish Church. She was present for the dedication on August 30 — the day before her big day.
The front of the oak communion table, made in London, has a machine-carved representation in deep relief of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper…’