HIDDEN SYMBOLS IN THE LAST SUPPER WENZY ROSE B. GEQUILLO Grade 11 S.Y 2018-2019 KEYWORDS: Hidden; Symbols; The Last Supper; Leonardo Da Vinci ABSTRACT This research aims to identify the hidden symbols in The Last Supper and their meanings. This study was able to provide detailed information about the symbols. The purpose of this study is to make people aware about the symbols hidden in the painting and the different theories and meanings researchers had made about the symbols. The researcher conducted this study through Data Mining. INTRODUCTION Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” is a Renaissance masterpiece which was requested by Ludovico Sforza near the end of the 15 th century. It struggled to keep intact over the centuries and great efforts to restore or stabilize the work had been made. There are many secrets and hidden symbols that lies behind the masterpiece and until now, researchers are still trying to unravel the secrets it hides. Scholars have looked at The Last Supper as the source of early Christian Eucharistic traditions and the researchers are still trying to decode what the painting really means in order to explain its secrets. No limitations have been encountered to date in explaining the symbols hidden in The Last Supper and there are many questions yet to be anwered about this painting. This study aims to identify the hidden symbols and explain them, to identify why Leonardo Da Vinci painted The Last Supper the way it is, and to identify why people concluded that there are hidden symbols in the painting. A theory used for this study is Plato’s Theory of Mimesis (4 th Century B.C). He stated that art is mimetic by nature and an imitation of life. Plato gave an example of a carpenter and a chair in which the idea of chair made the carpenter gave physical shape to his idea out of wood and made a chair. The painter imitated the chair and thus, painter’s chair is twice removed from the reality. It basically means that it is just an imitation of an imitation. This theory is useful in the study because it supports that Leonardo da Vinci gave visual form of his idea about The Last Supper and imitated how the apostles should be positioned based on their experiences from Jesus or what they did to him. Another theory is Ferdinande de Saussure’s Semiotics Theory (1907). It is concerned with everything that can be interpreted as a sign. Semiotics comprehend messages based on their signs and symbols and translates a picture from image into words. According to Saussure, the whole of a human experience is a structure that can be interpreted supported by signs. People use this signs to express their thoughts and feelings. This theory supports why people concluded that there are signs hidden in paintings or interpreted signs in them. MATERIAL(S) AND METHOD(S) This study focused mainly in identifying the hidden symbols in the painting “The Last Supper” and to find out the reason why Da Vinci painted it the way it is and why the people concluded that there are hidden symbols in the painting. In order to achieve these, the researcher used the method of Data Mining and gathered information that are useful in the study. The material used in this study are laptop and books which are used to gather information about The Last Supper and achieve the aim. RESULTS A 45-year old Italian musician, Giovanni Maria Pala, studied Da Vinci’s painting after hearing on a news program that researchers bellieved Da Vinci hid a musical composition in the painting. Pala saw that by drawing a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of the bread and the hands of Jesus and his apostles could each represent a musical note. According to Maria Pala, it sounds like a requiem that emphasizes the passion of Jesus. At first, the notes made no sense musically until he followed Leonardo’s particular writing style and realized that the composition had to be read from right to left. Fig. 1. The musical compisition hidden in the painting