Domenic John Zappia

Domenic John Zappia was born on November 29, 1900, in Platia, Italy. At four years old, Zappia immigrated to the United States with his mother and his stepfather. They settled in Franklin, Pennsylvania. 

Zappia attended the Cleveland School of Art. In 1926, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to work on ornamentation for the Midland Theater. He also worked for the Memorial Gardens Association Inc. in Kansas City, where his sculptures were made as ornamentation for cemeteries, churches and public buildings. 

Zappia is best-known for the life-size wooden sculpture he made of The Last Supper, modeled after Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the same name. Zappia spent four years creating the seventeen foot long sculpture of Arkansas basswood. The piece was commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. Harold E. Smith of Charleston, West Virginia, who were associated with the Tyler Mountain Memory Gardens there. The Last Supper was exhibited in the Protestant and Orthodox Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1964, then moved to the Protestant Chapel at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. The sculpture was purchased in 1971 with funds from two civic leaders by Country Club Christian Church in Kansas City. The sculpture is on display there presently.

Zappia also made sculptures for other churches, such as figures of the apostles for the Church of Our Lady in Buffalo, New York.