The OTHER Da Vinci Code ... of impending doom!

This has only just popped up onto our radar (it's amazing what random Googling can bring up) but we'd not spotted this insomnia-inducing prediction about the imminent end of the world ...

It has been claimed that the original Renaissance man, painter and polymath Leonardo da Vinci, predicted that the world would end on ... wait for it ... November 1, 4006!

Now, before you start selling your wordly goods, this prediction of impending doom has been made by Vatican researcher Sabrina Sforza Galitzia, who claims 'clues' were to be found in da Vinci’s Last Supper mural.

The central half-moon window, or lunette, above his painting of Christ with his disciples before the Crucifixion contains a “mathematical and astrological” puzzle which she has deciphered, she said.

She claimed to have worked out that da Vinci foresaw the end of the world in a “universal flood” which would begin on March 21, 4006 and end on November 1 the same year. Documents showed that he believed that this would mark “a new start for humanity”, Ms Sforza Galitzia said.

Last year, the Vatican published her study The Last Supper of Leonardo in the Vatican, in which she examined a tapestry of the Last Supper made for King Louis XIII of France, based on da Vinci’s design for his famous mural in Milan.