An Italian musician and computer technician claim to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's painting The Last Supper. This raises the possibility that the Renaissance genius may have left behind a musical composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting. Giovanni Maria Pala, a 45-year-old musician who lives near the southern Italian city of Lecce, began studying Leonardo's painting in 2003...after hearing on a news program that researchers believed the artist and inventor had hidden a musical composition in the work. In a book released on Friday in Italy, Pala explains how he interpreted elements of the painting that have symbolic value in Christian theology as musical clues. Pala first saw that -- by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting -- the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles... could each represent a musical note. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo's particular writing style. The result is a forty-second "hymn to God" that Pala says plays best on a pipe organ -- the instrument most commonly used in Leonardo's time for spiritual music. Pala stresses that his discovery doesn't reveal any supposed dark secrets of the Catholic Church or of Leonardo. But it shows the artist in a light far removed from the conspiratorial descriptions found in fiction. He can now be viewed as an artist who wasn't a heretic like some believe, but as a man who believed in God. Painted from 1494 to 1498, the "Last Supper" captures a key moment in the Gospel narration of Jesus' last meal with the twelve Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion. The painting vividly depicts the shock of Christ's followers as they learn that one of them is about to betray him.