According to an Italian researcher, Leonardo da Vinci may have hidden a secret code in his painting of the Mona Lisa.
Silvano Vinceti, of Italy’s national committee for cultural heritage, believes microscopic letters can be found in each eye.
In the right appears to be the inscription “LV,” most likely a reference to the painter himself...
...and in the left there appears to be indiscernible symbols and the letters “B” and “S”, or possibly the initials “CE.”
The arch in the bridge behind the mysterious model also appears to hold the number “72” or the combination “L2”...
...while “149” and an erased number can be found on the painting’s back side.
The find allegedly began with the discovery of an old art history book with rumors of other secret symbols hidden in the painting...
In the 1980s, a mysterious source advised British art history researchers that the tomb in “The Arcadian Shepherds” was real...
...and the background of Nicolas Poussin’s painting may hold clues to a secret Knights Templar treasure or the body of Jesus.
Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh believe the scene’s hilltop castle was near the site of a matching tombstone...
...also having the enigmatic inscription “Et in Arcadia ego,” “Even in Arcadia I exist,” and being some kind of marker.
Coded parchments are said to have been found buried under a parish near the hill claiming “Poussin holds the key.”
Adding to the painting’s mystique, it is rumored that King Louis XIV was obsessed with finding it and kept it from being viewed.
It is believed that Leonardo Da Vinci may have hidden a number of secrets in his painting “The Last Supper,” including music.
At its surface, the work depicts Jesus’ last meal with his 12 Apostles before he was betrayed and crucified...
...but Italian musician Giovanni Maria Pala also believes the loaves of bread and hands in the painting represent musical notes.
When drawn on a music staff and read from right to left, as Da Vinci wrote, Pala says a 40-second “hymn to God” is formed.
The resulting piece is described as a powerful and somber “requiem” that “emphasizes the passion of Jesus.”
Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Leonardo museum, believes the theory plausible, given the harmonic proportions of the painting.
Infrared imaging of Da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi has revealed a number of secret scenes that were previously covered up.
Hidden behind the men fighting on horses is what some believe was originally intended to be a full scale battle scene...
...and scans of the ruined building in the upper left appear to show “lotus columns” that are usually associated with Egypt.
Dr. Maurizio Seracini, the art diagnostician who performed the analysis, has suggested the top painting isn’t even by Da Vinci.
The “true” adoration may in fact be underneath and could imply a bloody war and the reestablishment of paganism...
Vatican Archives researcher Sabrina Sforza Galitzia claims to have cracked another secret code in Da Vinci’s “Last Supper”...
...deciphering mathematical symbols and astrological signs she says are hiding in the half-moon window above Christ’s head.
Working at the Vatican, Galitzia alleged she uncovered documents showing Da Vinci believed in a “a new start for humanity”...
...and that using the Zodiac and a coded alphabet representing time, he painted “the sum of all things, the final reckoning.”
Her research suggests that Da Vinci believed the end of the world will begin with a “universal flood” on March 21, 4006...