Leonardo's 'Last Supper' Hides True Da Vinci Code

Nov. 9, 2007 -- A real da Vinci code is indeed hidden within Leonardo's "The Last Supper," according to a book to be published in Italy next week.

But rather than conspiracy theories, the new code points to a hidden musical score, a sacred text and a three-dimensional chalice.

"This is not another spin-off of Dan Brown's novel. It's real," musician Giovanni Maria Pala told Discovery News in an exclusive interview. "I've always been intrigued by the possibility of finding a (piece of) music in the Last Supper, but I would have never imagined to find myself decoding a secret message by Leonardo."

Indeed, Leonardo was an accomplished lyre player who also enjoyed hiding puzzles in his work.

Pala, who will publish his findings next week in the book "La Musica Celata" (which translates to "The Hidden Music") claims to have discovered nothing less than a sacred hymn and text, along with mystic symbols in da Vinci's degraded masterpiece.

"I was first struck by the tablecloth, which features horizontal lines but also vertical lines in correspondence with the pieces of bread. This made me think immediately of music notes on a pentagram. I tried to play the notes, but it did not work. Looking at single details wasn't the correct approach," Pala said.

Finding the Hidden Score

According to Pala, "The Last Supper" must be seen "as a harmonic whole, in which each detail has a precise meaning."

The Apostles, represented in groups of three, gave him a hint that the piece should be played in 3/4-time, like much 15th-century music. But it was their hands, always in relation to the breads on the table, that provided the real score -- to be read from right to left, in line with Leonardo's writing.

"I marked the pieces of bread on the table and the Apostle's hands as music notes. Then I drew a pentagram over the scene between the tablecloth and Jesus' face. I couldn't believe my ears when I played the music. It sounded really solemn, almost like a requiem," Pala said.

But there was much more. Pala noticed that the notes, in their position, produced strange symbols -- similar to ancient cuneiform script -- when united to each other by lines.

Examined by Father Luigi Orlando, a biblical scholar at the Antonianum Pontifical University in Rome, the cuneiform writing turned out to be a sentence written in ancient Hebrew: "bo nezer usbi," which means "with Him consecration and glory."

Seeing the Chalice

"At this point I was totally into this puzzle," Pala said. "I placed the nine letters of the ancient Hebrew text one on top of the other, following an ascending path, which is the direction of the hands of the first six Apostles. The result was a strange image."

He noticed that on the table, to the right, Leonardo painted a piece of bread split in half.

"I thought of this as a hint to duplicate that image," Pala said. The resulting image -- nine letters stacked on top of each other and duplicated -- was the chalice.

When Pala rotated the image of the chalice further, he found a motif very similar to the decorations in Santa Maria delle Grazie, the church where Leonardo painted "The Last Supper" in 1497.

"I think there are too many things fitting together, and cannot just be coincidences," Pala said.

His discovery is sure to raise controversy.