Friday, July 27, 2007

More Da Vinci craziness

So this doesn't really have to do with entrepreneurship, but I was reading the news and came across the below story.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2779072020070727

New "Last Supper" theory crashes Leonardo Web sites
Fri Jul 27, 2007 1:58PM EDT

MILAN (Reuters) - A new theory that Leonardo's "Last Supper" might hide within it a depiction of Christ blessing the bread and wine has triggered so much interest that Web sites connected to the picture have crashed.

The famous fresco is already the focus of mythical speculation after author Dan Brown based his "The Da Vinci Code" book around the painting, arguing in the novel that Jesus married his follower, Mary Magdelene, and fathered a child.

Now Slavisa Pesci, an information technologist and amateur scholar, says superimposing the "Last Supper" with its mirror-image throws up another picture containing a figure who looks like a Templar knight and another holding a small baby.

"I came across it by accident, from some of the details you can infer that we are not talking about chance but about a precise calculation," Pesci told journalists when he unveiled the theory earlier this week.

Websites www.leonardodavinci.tv, www.codicedavinci.tv, www.cenacolo.biz and www.leonardo2007.com had 15 million hits on Thursday morning alone, organizers said, adding they were trying to provide a more powerful server for the sites.

In the superimposed version, a figure on Christ's left appears to be cradling a baby in its arms, Pesci said, but he made no suggestion this could be Christ's child.

Judas, whose imminent betrayal of Christ is the force breaking the right-hand line of the original fresco, appears in an empty space on the left in the reverse image version.

And Pesci also suggests that the superimposed version shows a goblet before Christ and illustrates when Christ blessed bread and wine at a supper with his disciples for the first Eucharist.

The original Da Vinci depicts Christ when he predicts that one among them will betray him.


Since all the linked sites were down, I decided to try and make these mirrored images myself. I used a few versions of The Last Supper that I could find using Google Image Search. They all showed pretty much the same patterns with different levels of clarity. Below is the one I think came out the best. The original image is here, which is from a website titled The Truth Decoded. Kind of ironic that I am using their hosted picture, as the website's mission is to arm Catholics with information to dissuade believers in any theories presented in The Da Vinci Code. Anyhow. the top picture is the original image and below it is the overlayed mirror image. Now the real question is...is there something really there?



Click for a larger image

ADDITION:
I thought I'd add a little help for those of you who are looking for the images described in the article.

1. goblet
2. person cradling a baby
3. Templar knight

Click for a larger image

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