An Italian IT expert claims to have found a secret image of the Virgin Mary and a Knight Templar inside Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper.
Pesci Slavisa said the image can only be seen in a certain light and that he had to use his computer skills to reveal it.
"I noticed a strange effect, like a shadow, when I was looking through a magazine with a reproduction of The Last Supper," the 36-year-old explained.
"So I scanned the painting and printed it onto a transparent sheet, which I then laid over the original image.
"The result is a new painting with other figures".
The news may revive the debate about the painting's alleged hidden meanings, which was stirred up by Dan Brown's bestselling thriller The Da Vinci Code.
In The Da Vinci Code, Brown controversially suggested, among other things, that the figure closest to Jesus in the painting was not St John but Mary Magdalene.
The book argues Mary Magdalene was misrepresented in male-dominated Christian history because she allegedly led the Apostles and started Jesus's blood line: supposedly the real 'Holy Grail' (in French, 'sang real' or royal blood).
The 'truth' about the Holy Grail is guarded by the Priory of Sion, which created the Knights Templar, according to the book.
Slavisa, however, insisted that he was not trying to prove any theories about the artwork.
"I'm not an art critic," he said. "Other people will give explanations of the image. I limit myself to presenting what I noticed by chance, which can be verified very simply.
"I have not even read The Da Vinci Code, I've only seen the film, and I'm not even a Leonardo enthusiast.
"Indeed, I was not going to make my findings public at first".
Milan Culture Councillor and renowned art critic Vittorio Sgarbi dismissed Slavisa's claims as "pure invention".
"Although I have not followed this matter, I think it is totally without foundation," he said.
"The iconography of The Last Supper is the most classical and evangelical. It's impossible that the painting contains different people from the ones that can be seen.
"Only someone as ignorant as a goat could introduce elements that are not absolutely orthodox into The Last Supper.
"If someone sees something by looking at it through a mirror then that is their point of view, but it is nothing to do with what Leonardo wanted or thought".
