LOL I think they're easy to write about because most people know they're secret but not what the secrets are. So it's easy to say "well what if their secret was THIS!!!" and have people wonder

Lisa - good comment about the reason Peter might be holding the knife - remember, according the scriptures, later that evening Peter would use such a knife in a violent way. Leonardo would seem more likely to be foreshadowing that event.

On a high resolution picture it kinda looks like Peter is grasping "the arm with the knife" by the wrist,as if to hold it down.

Frankly, the hand and the knife do not seem to be the issue at all! The fact that the person on the right could be a woman (MaryM as claimed by DB in dVC) is more startling. I do not know if this was previously documented (if at all this is true) and what in the name of heaven is a woman doing there? Now do we need to believe what DB said now or waht was said in HBHG to be true???

Japan Dan - Definitely the scriptures reason seems to be the reason the knife is there in Peter's hand in the first place. Remember, Leonardo could have put ANY apostle in that location if his only aim was to have a knife in someone's hand. He chose Peter for a particular reason that people would have understood. Back in those times, the common population was far more familiar with the Bible than we are nowadays. It was their entire lives, it was their literature.

There are many layers of meaning in the painting - from some which are 'immediately obvious' to even the most typical viewer (of the time) to other meanings which are more hidden. So the obvious meaning would have been Peter's place in history - but the more subtle meaning is why the knife is aimed and pointed the way it is ...

Danted7 - yes exactly! For those who don't know what he's looking at - look here -

http://milano.arounder.com/PROJECTS/SANTA_MARIA_DELLE_GRAZIE/

that is a very high resolution image of the painting. When you look at Peter's hand, it literally looks like it is coming in at a 90 degree (right) angle to the knife. Yes it is *conceivable* that a hand could hold a knife that way, but it is poor anatomy for a painting. Leonardo was a master of anatomy. It really looks like Peter is instead holding someone's hand that is trying to wield a knife and that Peter is *holding back* that hand.

Again this is the difference between first glance meaning and more intense evaluation. The first glance says "Peter holds a knife, just like the scriptures say". The more intense evaluation says "wait a minute, Peter is actually preventing an attack ..."

Satya - the Mary issue is an important one, I'll start a new thread to talk about that one I have several pages on the site that explicitly talk about that issue.

I suspect it was painted in such a way to hint at a number of meanings. Wouldn't it be funny though, if Leonardo specifically thought "How can I do this in such a way that the most people will spend the most time speculating on the meaning?"

He definitely was a very intelligent man who was already quite famous by the time he did this painting. So he definitely had a lot of meaning put into each painting and loved the attention they brought

What I see in the anonymous painting is that Peter is grabbing a hand (pretty tightly indeed). The mysterious hand has a knife. Peter's hand is darker than the strange hand. What is your opinion?