It’s pretty cool when you find an Easter egg on a Bluray or hidden within a movie. But it’s even more fascinating when you uncover mysterious messages buried in famous works of art. Some of the secrets on our list remained undiscovered for over half a millennia, including a hidden musical score, a mysterious object floating in the sky, and one famous composer’s tribute to a clandestine worldwide organization. Here is our list of the top seven secrets hidden in famous artworks.
Number seven. The Secret of the Last Supper. Leonardo DA Vinci was a man of many talents. He was an inventor, architect, scientist, sculptor, and, of course, an artist. But there’s one more talent Da Vinci is known for, which may have been hidden in one of his most famous works, The Last Supper.
And that talent was music. In 2003, Giovanni Maria Pala discovered that if you draw lines of musical staff across the painting to correspond with the positions of the hands of the Apostles and loaves of bread, you uncover a melody that had remained secret for over 500 years. At first, the music didn’t make any sense, but after remembering that Leonardo wrote the music from right to left, Giovanni reversed the score. You see Leonardo wasn’t the only one who could hide things in great art. Six the Secret Diagram Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, is one of the most iconic images in human history, depicting the Book of Genesis scene where God breathes life into Adam through his fingers.
Because the painting of the Lord Almighty going mouth to mouth with Adam may have been a little risque for the walls of the Sistine Chapel. But in 1990, an American physician, Dr. Frank Meshberger, noticed something familiar about the area surrounding God. What is that weird shape that the Lord seems to be crowd surfing out from Meshberger noticed that the border of the area behind God corresponds precisely with a side profile cross-section of the human brain? Here’s the pituitary gland, the frontal lobe, the vertebral artery, the spinal cord, the pawns, the silver fissure, and the brainstem.
And if you need further evidence, then consider the fact that at age 17, Michelangelo was a passionate anatomy student who dissected corpses from his local Church graveyard to study. And that alone will get you on some sort of watch list. So maybe don’t judge that kid in your class who likes to play with Roadkill because he could be the world’s next great artist in at five evidence of ancient aliens. Take a look at this image of DOMINICO Gearlin Dio’s painting the Madonna with St. Giovannino and see what catches your eye immediately.
Is it the attractive lady in the center? Perhaps it’s the baby with a low slung of slacks trying to give her a high five while the other angel baby checks out his Jillian Michael’s Physique. That kid is more ripped than I’ll ever be. Or maybe the first thing you noticed was the strange object hovering in the sky and the dude below it wondering what the heck it is. Several paintings depict unidentified flying objects in the sky.
But Gerland Dio’s is one of the most startling due to its prominence in the reaction of the guy on the right. He’s looking at a disc-shaped object which seems to be shining brightly while stuck out in a strange array of Spears. What on Earth were Gill and Dio trying to show us? Or maybe Earth isn’t the proper word to use number four a message for the Pope. This is Michelangelo’s, the Prophet Zechariah, and it was painted in the Sistine Chapel in 1512 during the reign of Pope Julius II.
Now to say Pope Julius wasn’t everybody’s favorite is a bit like saying people thought the new Ghostbusters three trailer looked a little crappy. Julius II was known as Papa Terrible, and you can translate that for yourself. But Michelangelo wasn’t a fan either, and it’s believed that he painted Zechariah in a way that closely resembles Pope Julius. Now that’s not particularly insulting, is it sounds like quite a nice gesture until you realize one of the two babies sitting behind Zechariah is making a little gesture of its own.
See the thumb poking out between the middle and index fingers?
Well, the Pope didn’t and or did the Vatican due to it being placed so high up in the Chapel. But if they had, they would have seen a baby making a gesture known as the fig, which is an ancient way of saying, and let me get this translation right. Are you three Mona Lisa’s secret? So we already know that Leonardo DA Vinci likes to hide musical scores in his work. But what secrets could remain hidden in the Mona Lisa, one of the world’s most famous pictures of someone being forced to smile on picture day.
Many theories have been thrown around regarding the layout of the picture, such as the idea that Mona Lisa was pregnant due to the arrangement of her hands, that she may have been a prostitute due to her lack of facial hair. And when the image was analyzed by a doctor, he noticed that Mona Lisa may have been suffering from a tumor in her right eye. A tumor DA Vinci clearly must have noticed. So did he tell her? And that’s not the end of it?
Because there’s even more to this picture than meets the eye, literally by magnifying her right eye. You’ll see the letters L v. Appear probably a signature, but the left eye shows Ce So, whose signature is that? On the bridge’s arch? There’s the number 72.
And beneath the painting itself, the number 149 is hidden away. We can view DA Vinci’s previous attempts at the painting through layer amplification technology, which is how we know about the number 149 and also how we know there’s a whole other painting of a completely different woman underneath. So who is she? And what do all those letters and numbers mean? Da Vinci?
Not the type of guy to put those things there for no reason. So if we don’t know yet, it’s probably going to take us another 500 years to figure that one out. Two. The Purcell Portrait of a President. This is a portrait of former President Bill Clinton, which hangs in the Smithsonian Natural Portrait Gallery, and its artist Nelson Shanks has admitted that hidden within the painting is a reference to one of the most shocking moments of Clinton’s presidency.
See the dark shadow on the Mantel of the Oval Office just over Bill Clinton’s right shoulder. This shadow came from a mannequin which Shanks snuck into the Oval Office whilst painting the backdrop. When Bill Clinton wasn’t there, the mannequin was covered with a blue dress similar to the one worn by Monica Lewinsky when she most famously helped the President find his lost contact lens over and over and over. And Shank claims that this shadow is a metaphor for the stained legacy of Clinton’s time in the Oval Office.
Makes you wonder which other famous presidential portraits have secrets hidden within them.
Does Theodore Roosevelt have a Teddy bear in his pocket, or is he just happy to see you? And at number one, the Mysterious Musical Maestro? This is a painting of classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when he was just six years old. The painting was created by Pietro Antonio Lorenzo in 1763. But did you know that the way Mozart has depicted hints at his membership of the world’s most secretive society, the Mysterious Freemasons?
It is well known that Mozart became a Freemason later in life. But does this painting indicate his involvement from a much earlier age? A hand hidden within the shirt or jacket pocket is believed to be an indication of one’s dedication to the Masonic cause. And whilst many of his later works do allude to his devotion to Freemasonry, it would be quite shocking if he had been indoctrinated from the age of six. Oh, wait, hang on.