What Scientists Found in This Leonardo da Vinci Painting Will Shock You!

For over 500 years, Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper has been one of the most studied paintings in the world. But in 1978, a team of restorers began cleaning it — and what they uncovered took 21 years to finish and changed everything we thought we knew about this masterpiece. Beneath centuries of grime, smoke, and clumsy overpainting from other artists, they found details Leonardo actually painted — and details that had been added by hands that weren't his. Faces that had been altered. Beards that were never there. A hand holding a knife that nobody could explain. And by the end, one unsettling truth: only about 40% of what you see today was truly painted by Leonardo himself. In this video, we go inside the restoration of The Last Supper (Il Cenacolo) in Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan — from Leonardo's doomed experimental technique that began flaking off within his own lifetime, to the door cut through the wall in 1652, to Napoleon's troops, to the 1943 bombing that nearly destroyed it, to the painstaking 21-year restoration that finally revealed the original underneath. What scientists and restorers found will change how you see this painting forever. If you enjoy the hidden stories behind the world's most famous paintings, subscribe, a new one drops every week.