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Hearing Da Vinci’s Last Supper
In 2015, Italian musician and computer-tech, Giovanni Maria Pala, had made the intriguing discovery that Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Last Supper is more than just a visual conveyance of art — that it contains musical notations too.
The hidden symbolism throughout Leonardo’s works is nothing new — from cryptic letters and numbers inscribed into the Mona Lisa to the hermetic symbols of his Salvatore Mundi, I’m convinced that he has been communicating his ideas to future generations through ciphered meanings in his works rather than the obvious representations he had been commissioned, largely by the church, to create.
Each bread roll, in combination with the hands of the subjects, corresponds to a music note which translates into a mystic auditory requiem. “The result is a 40-second “hymn to God” that Pala said plays best on a pipe organ, the instrument most commonly used in Leonardo’s time for spiritual music” .The music piece can easily be found online and sounds like more than a more attempt to force meaning where none can be had.
So, assuming that Da Vinci had intended to incorporate music notes into one of the most famous paintings in the world, why would he do this to begin with?
It can certainly be argued that Da Vinci treated his commissioned works as a means of conveying hidden messages — this, I would say, is undoubtedly true. His art, in other terms, acts as a portal of communication and knowledge. He knew that, during his time, the average mind would not pick up on the immensely subtle peculiarities he hid in his work. He also knew that these works, commissioned by the likes of King Louis XII, would have a great chance of withstanding the tests of time given their value. In retrospect, one can see that Leonardo had a perfect opportunity to convey messages through his work to future generations; the inventor that he was (see his Aerial Scre airplane, his armored car, crossbow and parachute among others), he had certainly possessed a forward-focused vision towards the future.
Leonardo‘s works also depict an abundance of heretic symbolism throughout. Simply search the controversial interpretations relating to‘Virgin of the Rocks’ or my comments on his Salvatore Mundi. Given the religious zeal of the time in which Da Vinci found himself in, there was no chance for…
