Posted on 07/26/2007 7:03:19 AM PDT by NYer
An Italian IT expert claims to have found a secret image of the Virgin Mary and a Knight Templar inside Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper.
Pesci Slavisa said the image can only be seen in a certain light and that he had to use his computer skills to reveal it.
“I noticed a strange effect, like a shadow, when I was looking through a magazine with a reproduction of The Last Supper,” the 36-year-old explained.
“So I scanned the painting and printed it onto a transparent sheet, which I then laid over the original image.
“The result is a new painting with other figures”.
The news may revive the debate about the painting’s alleged hidden meanings, which was stirred up by Dan Brown’s bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code.
In The Da Vinci Code, Brown controversially suggested, among other things, that the figure closest to Jesus in the painting was not St John but Mary Magdalene.
The book argues Mary Magdalene was misrepresented in male-dominated Christian history because she allegedly led the Apostles and started Jesus’s blood line: supposedly the real ‘Holy Grail’ (in French, ’sang real’ or royal blood).
The ‘truth’ about the Holy Grail is guarded by the Priory of Sion, which created the Knights Templar, according to the book.
Slavisa, however, insisted that he was not trying to prove any theories about the artwork.
“I’m not an art critic,” he said. “Other people will give explanations of the image. I limit myself to presenting what I noticed by chance, which can be verified very simply.
“I have not even read The Da Vinci Code, I’ve only seen the film, and I’m not even a Leonardo enthusiast.
“Indeed, I was not going to make my findings public at first”.
Milan Culture Councillor and renowned art critic Vittorio Sgarbi dismissed Slavisa’s claims as “pure invention”.
“Although I have not followed this matter, I think it is totally without foundation,” he said.
“The iconography of The Last Supper is the most classical and evangelical. It’s impossible that the painting contains different people from the ones that can be seen.
“Only someone as ignorant as a goat could introduce elements that are not absolutely orthodox into The Last Supper.
“If someone sees something by looking at it through a mirror then that is their point of view, but it is nothing to do with what Leonardo wanted or thought”.
Sure, the ignorant will make fun of this revelation, but maybe this guy was given magic glasses by the angel Moroni; have you thought of that?
‘Sure, the ignorant will make fun of this revelation, but maybe this guy was given magic glasses by the angel Moroni; have you thought of that?’
Maybe it was ‘magic dust’?
Actually, that’s every bit as likely as this guy’s story.
Actually, thats every bit as likely as this guys story.
I think the guy just wanted some attention.
What are the chances that he just painted over another picture?
It’s been done before.
The fact of the matter is, this painting has been "restored" and repaired so many times by so many hands that there is plenty of doubt as to how close what we see today is to what Leonardo actually painted. I find it highly doubtful that any "newly discovered" hidden or subliminal symbols were actually part of the original design, or if they were, were only hidden by subsequent artists.
The whole Dan Brown thing, about the presence of Mary Magdalene's appearance in the painting is highly spurious, given that most of the faces as we view them now, are probably only vague suggestions of the manner in which they were originally rendered.
I KNEW IT!
All kidding aside, that does look like a chick on Jesus’s right.
Same here. All I could figure is that this conspiracy includes the idea that Da Vinci knew about the secrets alleged by the theorists to be true.
Is this the same guy who hears stuff when playing old Beatles records backwards at 66 rpm?
OK, what’s that thing under the guy’s arm that is sitting third from the right? Looks like a stuffed pig.
'Slim' and 'None'.
It's a mural that Leonardo painted on a wall of stone...not a canvas.
I’ve always thought that, even as a little kid.
“It would not surprise me to discover that there are figures in an underpainting that were eliminated or repositioned in the final composition. That doesnt make them secret messages.”
Your theory is a good one, but he might have indeed intended it to be a “secret message” - from his imagination.
I paint using oil based paints and various quality canvasses. Often times, I purposely weave in and/or add “hidden” images in the painting or beind the obvious picture. Some people “see” what’s “hidden” to the naked eye, some people don’t - or they do after a time.
Regardless, it’s a painting, not a snapshot.
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