Da Vinci began working on "Battle of Anghiari" in 1505

A search for Leonardo Da Vinci's long-long masterpiece "Battle of Anghiari" began 30 years ago, when art researcher Maurizio Seracini noticed a cryptic message painted on this fresco.

In the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley" by 16th-century artist Giorgio Vasari, the words "Cerca Trova" (Seek and you shall find) appear on a flag.

Between 2002 and 2003, radar and X-ray scans allowed Seracini and his team to find a cavity behind the fresco that is the right size to conceal Da Vinci's work.

Seracini's quest at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, ended when the city refused to renew his survey permit. It's now allowing the investigation to resume.

In this computer manipulation, Pesci superimposed a reverse version of the painting over the original.

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In the middle of this left side of the manipulated version, a figure appears to be cradling an infant.

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The two figures on either end of the long table appear to become knights. SEE LARGER

MILAN (July 27) - A new theory that Leonardo's "Last Supper" might hide within it a depiction of Christ blessing the bread and wine has triggered so much interest that Web sites connected to the picture have crashed.

The famous fresco is already the focus of mythical speculation after author Dan Brown based his "The Da Vinci Code" book around the painting, arguing in the novel that Jesus married his follower, Mary Magdelene, and fathered a child.

Now Slavisa Pesci, an information technologist, says superimposing the "Last Supper" with its mirror-image throws up another picture containing a figure who looks like a Templar knight and another holding a small baby.

"I came across it by accident, from some of the details you can infer that we are not talking about chance but about a precise calculation," Pesci told journalists when he unveiled the theory earlier this week.

In the superimposed version, a figure on Christ's left appears to be cradling a baby in its arms, Pesci said, but he made no suggestion this could be Christ's child.

Judas, whose imminent betrayal of Christ is the force breaking the right-hand line of the original fresco, appears in an empty space on the left in the reverse image version.