Milan, 1497: Leonardo is completing The Last Supper. Pope Alexander VI is determined to execute him after realizing that the painting contains clues to a baffling--and blasphemous message that he is driven to decode. The Holy Grail and the Eucharistic Bread are missing; there is no meat on the table, and the apostles, shockingly, are portraits ofwetl-known heretics--and none of them are depicted with halos. And why has the artist painted himself into the scene with his back turned toward Jesus? T, he clues to Leonardo's greatest puzzle are right before your eyes.

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Europe still held intact its gift for understanding ancestral images and symbols. Its people knew how and when to interpret the design on a column, a particular figure in a painting or a simple sign on the road, even though only a minority had, in those days, learned to read and write.

With the arrival of the Age of Reason, the gift for interpreting such languages was lost, and with it, a good part of the richness bequeathed to us by our ancestors.

This book makes use of many of those symbols as they were conceived once upon a time. But it also intends to restore to the modern reader the ability both to understand them and to benefit from their infinite wisdom.