Art Bites: Did Leonardo Hide Music in ‘The Last Supper’?
Dinner and a show.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (c. 1495-98) which shows the final meeting of Jesus and the 12 apostles, is one of the world’s most famous artworks.
It has been analysed time and time again, its true cast of figures has been questioned, has been found to contain hidden astrological messages, and in 2007 a University of Oxford doctorate candidate found that the masterpiece was also holding a musical secret: a hidden hymn coded in the bread.
Giovanni Maria Pala, an Italian musician, computer technician, and at the time student at Magdalen College, had been fascinated by Leonardo and The Last Supper for years.
He began examining the straight row of scattered pieces of bread that ran along the iconic table, which were present in the banquet as a symbol of the body of Christ.
What Pala found was that, when paired with the hand-placement of the 13 figures, the bread spelled out a haunting 40-second melody when the painting was overlaid with a standard five-line musical staff.