Is There a Song Hidden in The Last Supper? We Played It

A musician says the bread on this table is a song. That tune came from these loaves. Real or fake? Let's find out. First, a challenge. Count the loaves on this table. Three, two, one. Got a number? Hold on to it. The musician says the loaves in the hands could each be a note. So here is the question. Is there really a song in The Last Supper? Then we play it for you. You decide. On the way. A silver lyre, a spilled salt cellar, and a plate of eel, and a prior who wanted this painting finished. But first, why would anyone look for music in a painting? Because Leonardo da Vinci was a musician. His biographer Giorgio Vasari says Leonardo learned to play the lyre, and that he sang to it, making up songs as he went. This is a lira da braccio, a kind of small violin. Vasari says Leonardo built his own lyre. Mostly of silver, shaped like a horse's skull. Another source says, a silver string instrument, shaped like a horse's head. No instrument of Leonardo's is known to survive. Vasari says the Duke of Milan loved the sound of it. But Vasari wrote in 1568, 70 years after the painting was finished. So his stories deserve a little caution. Now look at this portrait, called Portrait of a Musician. It is widely attributed to Leonardo. If it is his, it is his only known portrait of a man. A restoration revealed a hand holding sheet music. Then there are his notebooks. Look at this page of picture riddles. The last line is made of musical notes. He also designed a strange instrument. The viola organista. A builder made one from his drawings. With changes. The world first heard it in 2013. It is a piano-like instrument that sounds like a violin. So Leonardo and music, that part is real. A song hidden in his painting, that part is only a claim. One more habit matters here. Leonardo wrote his notes backwards, mirror writing, right to left. The most cited reason, he was left-handed. Writing this way kept the ink from smudging. Nobody knows for sure. Keep that in mind. The musician is Giovanni Maria Palla, from Italy. He reads his song right to left too. In 2003, Pala heard a news program. It said researchers believed Leonardo had hidden music in this painting. He began studying it and kept going for four years. Leonardo painted this wall in about three years. Pala studied it longer. He drew five lines across it, like a musical staff. He says the loaves and the hands could each be a note. Read from right to left, he says. 40-second hymn to God. He says it sounds like a requiem, best played on a pipe organ. He published it in 2007 in a book called La Musica Cellata, The Hidden Music. The Associated Press reported it as a claim. That is, Pala's claim. Now, the table he used. Now, the table itself. Where is everyone sitting? All of them are on one side, facing us. Some of you asked why. Here is the practical answer. That way, nobody has his back to the viewer. The apostles also sit in groups of three, four groups of three, with Jesus in the middle. Leonardo even wrote notes about the gestures of the diners. One note reads, a mouth of astonishment, another, stern brows, and one diner holds a knife and a half-cut loaf. Now look at older paintings. This is Castagno from 1447. Judas sits alone on the other side of the table. Painters usually did it that way, to set the traitor apart. Ghirlandaio in 1480. Again, Judas is across the table, alone. Leonardo breaks the pattern. Judas sits in the row, among the others, and he leans back into shadow. Some critics say this makes the betrayal feel closer. Now look low, just past Judas. A hand holds a knife. Whose hand is it? It seems to belong to no one. A best-selling novel turned this into a conspiracy. Art historians do not buy it. It is Peter's hand. Leonardo drew that arm on its own sheet around 1495. Peter's arm twists behind Judas, and Judas hides the middle of it. The drawing proves the arm. It does not prove the knife. So why a knife at all? Many historians read it as a hint. In John's Gospel, Peter cuts off a servant's ear that same night. Others say it is just a table knife. There are other knives on the table. Nobody knows what Leonardo meant. To see what time erased, historians use a copy. Giampietrino, a follower of Leonardo, painted it around 1520. Other copies survive in Switzerland and Belgium. The Giampietrino copy keeps details the original lost, like Christ's feet, and a salt cellar, spilled by Judas' arm. In the original, only a small white shape is left. A scholar wrote in 1883, It is not a glass. It is a salt cellar. Spilled salt was a bad omen. Some read it as a sign of betrayal. Judas also clutches a small bag. Many read it as the silver, and he reaches for a piece of bread. Jesus reaches too. But for a different piece, critics link this to the gospel line about a hand in the dish. But the painting shows two different pieces of bread. Now look at the rest of the table. Pewter plates, knives, jugs, glasses, bowls. The restoration made these details visible again. Now look at the face of Judas once more. There is one surviving drawing of his head, in red chalk, at Windsor. The Royal Collection says it shows mild surprise, not evil intent. It adds that later copyists exaggerated his features. It also notes doubts about the drawing itself, so call it a clue. And why is Judas in shadow? Leonardo never wrote why. Critics say the dark marks the betrayer, but the dark we see today has also been damaged and repainted. You may have heard that one man posed for both Jesus and Judas. There is no record of that. It is a moral tale from centuries later. Remember the bread and hold your number. In a few minutes, that bread becomes music. There is a reason Judas took so long to paint. It involves a prior. The whole painting took Leonardo about three years. Now, a young monk watched him work. His name was Matteo Bandello. Some days, he wrote, Leonardo painted from dawn to dusk, forgetting to eat. On other days, he just stood there, arms folded, looking. Bandello wrote this decades later, so it is a memory, not a record. But the prior of the monastery was not happy. According to Vasari, he wanted Leonardo to work like the men hoeing his garden. He complained to the duke. And the duke called Leonardo in. But Leonardo had an answer. Two heads were still missing. Which two? Christ's and Judas's. Christ's, he said, he could not seek on earth. For Judas, he would search for a model. And if he found nothing better, he would use the prior's face. The duke, Vasari says, laughed. And the prior went back to his garden. Vasari begins with the words, It is said. No letter or notebook confirms it. An older version comes from a writer named Giraldi in 1554. He heard it from his father, who knew Leonardo in Milan. In his version, Leonardo hunts for faces in the Borghetto, a rough quarter of town. That story is not in Leonardo's notebooks. Did he ever use the prior's face? Whether he meant it, nobody knows. Vasari says he finished only the head of Judas. He says it looks like treachery itself. Yet the one drawing we have shows a startled man. Back to the table. What are they actually eating? The Gospels set this meal at Passover, when lamb is usual. No lamb. One study in Gastronomica points that out. One plate appears to hold about half a dozen whole fish. Eel? On the small plates at right, that study sees grilled eel with orange slices. Eel with orange was fashionable then, the study says, and Leonardo's His own notes list eels among his purchases. Maybe pomegranates too, and plenty of bread and wine. Bread and wine are what every Last Supper needs. Hold your number. We are almost there. But there is a catch. All of this is painted on a wall. It began to deteriorate soon after it was finished. In 1498, the wall was sealed with gesso, pitch, and mastic. By 1556, Vasari saw only a muddle of blots. Then, on the 15th of August 1943, bombs hit the building. Sandbags shielded the wall from flying fragments. The blast's vibration may still have hurt it. Then came the restoration, led by Pinin Brambilla-Barcilon. It lasted 21 years, from 1978 to 1999. Restorers used infrared scans and Leonardo's own drawings. And the Giampietrino copy was a main source. Where the paint was gone for good, they filled gaps in watercolor. It caused considerable controversy. So much of what we see today is reconstruction. Any pattern we find sits on a surface that has changed, and the bread you are about to hear sits on that surface. Time for the experiment. Paula's recipe is simple. Five lines, loaves and hands, read right to left. Anyone can try it. So we did. Before you listen, three warnings. One, this is not Paula's recording. It is under copyright. Two, this is our own reading of his method. Three, nobody has proven that Leonardo meant any of it. Here is our staff. Five lines across the bread. In our reading, how high a loaf sits on the lines sets its note. We read them from right to left, and play them on a synthesized organ. Paula's piece lasts 40 seconds. Ours is shorter, about 13. Is it a hymn, a requiem, or just noise? Watch each loaf light up as it plays. Listen. Ours is not his. and it is not proof. What did you hear, or just a pattern? If you like checking famous art's biggest rumors, subscribe. One masterpiece, every week. So what do experts say? The press quoted one, Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci. He had not seen Paula's research, but he called the idea plausible. Then came his warning. There is always a risk of seeing something that is not there, and where you have harmonic proportions, you can find music. But patterns are easy to find. That is the whole risk. Now, a Chilean newspaper retold his method step by step. First, each loaf of bread becomes a note, then the apostle's hands add signs. And an Italian site described the book as the real thesis, that Leonardo may have arranged the hands and the bread to write a secret melody. The same article said some of his links may sound forced, but it also called the result concrete and unique. It also noted that Paula cites no expert. In open sources we found no musicologist who tested the score. To be fair, that does not mean it is wrong. Plausible means possible. It does not mean proven. And every choice in this method changes the song. Where do the five lines go? Move them up, and the notes change. Which objects count as notes? Loaves only, or loaves and hands? Which way do you read? Right to left is a choice too. Paula's version. 40 seconds. A hymn. A requiem. A pipe organ. Hours. 13 seconds. A synthesized organ. Our own staff. Same idea, different choices, different song. Now, your bread number. We count about 12 loaves in that row. That is our own count, not a source's. Did you get 12? In the copy, the loaves are easier to see. Try it yourself. A staff can go anywhere. Move the lines, and the notes change. Here is why ideas like this spread. We love to decode. A code feels like a door. Behind it, a secret. Sometimes there is a room behind the door. Sometimes it is a wall. So here is what we know and what we do not. We know Leonardo played music and loved puzzles. We know he wrote backwards. We know Paula published a claim in 2007. We do not know that Leonardo meant any music. We do not know the melody is correct. And in open sources, no expert has confirmed it. What would settle it? A musicologist checking every note. And documents showing what Leonardo intended. Neither exists in the sources we found. So, is there really a song in The Last Supper? We could play a tune from it. Whether Leonardo meant one, nobody can say. A tune you can play, is not a tune the painter wrote. A musician says the bread is a song. We played it. Now you decide. Real or fake? Tell me below. Which painting should we decode next? Here is a challenge. Screenshot the table and draw your own five lines. Read it right to left. Is your tune the same as ours? Probably not. And that tells you something. Remember Peter, Judas, and the young apostle? They sit together. The Da Vinci Code, in 2003, made suspicious readings of this table famous. Art historians do not buy them. Leonardo left no note about any of it. And if you like faces in plain sight, there is one more, the young figure beside Jesus. Historians identify him as John. He is young, with soft features. That is why some people see a woman. That idea comes from books published in 1982 and 1997. Art historians say it is John. The next video is on your screen. Look at that face and decide for yourself.