For hundreds years Raphael Santi's fresco the School of Athens at the Vatican Library has kept a secret that is related to our country. The discovery is made by Professor of the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio Eectronics Grigory Reviako who has found a striking resemblance of one of the persons from the fresco of the famous Italian painter to Frantisek Skorina. His evidence is so convincing that is impossible to dispute it.

First, Doctor of Arts Skorina, an expert in Italian art, lived in Italy at the time when the fresco was painted and visited Rome and Padua where he got a Doctor degree in medicine. There is no historical evidence whether they were actually acquainted but considering the fact that artists and art experts had common interests they were bound to meet each other. Art experts used to consult customers which artist they should go to; therefore, artists were especially interested in having good relations with experts.

As to the frescos in the Vatican library, the contemporaries testified that the Pope proved to be very fastidious while choosing the right artist. He had been turning down all candidates and their projects for a long time until his final choice fell on Raphael. Naturally, the Pope's aids didn't find themselves the young and still unknown artist. There was somebody who recommended them to draw their attention to the promising painter. Frantisek Skorina could be that unknown expert. There are no grounds to state that our fellow citizen is the author of the idea of the fresco, though his recommendation that gave an impetus to Raphael's career was a good enough reason for the artist to immortalize his benefactor.

There is some other evidence to the theory. The portraits of Socrates, Ptolemy, Heraclitus and other prominent historical figures were made after Raphael's contemporaries  Italian public figures, scientists, and political leaders. Only the portrait of the person whom the artist painted next to himself, thus changing the original sketch, approved by the customer, remained unidentified. The masters of monumental painting tend to pay tribute to their co-authors. However, it is a well-known fact that Raphael made the fresco alone. Therefore, the unidentified person on the fresco could be his unknown benefactor. Or perhaps he was the co-author of the idea. Following Grigory Reviako, we may conclude that the person on the fresco next to Raphael and the self-portrait on Skorina's Bible is the same person.

The second side of the story is how the scientist who works at a university that is not related to the history of art became interested in Skorina's works.

"The thing is that when we celebrated Skorina's anniversary I read an article about the mysteries of Skorina's engravings, Grigory Reviako explained. Since our laboratory of informative-cybernetic systems is working on computer decoding of photographs made in the outer space, I decided to use these technologies to decipher cryptographic writing. I started to study literature on secret texts  from Maya Indians to the Middle Ages where enciphering was a common practice. Skorina turned out to use well-known techniques of coding the message. As Skorina was a good expert in astrology, he decorated his engravings with astrological symbols. All his drawings from the Bible and other books were put in a database and cleaned from damage and deformation with the help of special technologies. When the drawings were processes by a special computer program that reveals secret images, we saw a lot of interesting things. Skorina's most favorite decoding technique was the mirror reflection. In other words, when a mirror is placed against the drawing at a certain angle, the chaotic collection of lines reveals a hidden image, one half of which is on the paper, the second is on the mirror. Anyway, the meaning of the discovered image needs interpreting. We have found interpretation for most of the images but some of them are still a mystery."

The manipulation with mirror reflection helped the scientist to decipher among plant ornament a human figure that symbolizes the revival of spiritual values. The mirror showed a devil's face and the sun that symbolizes the dark and light beginning of the human soul. The miniature with the capital letter "R" refers to the reversed image of the double eagle, the symbol of Russia that was suffering war defeats. Inserting the woman's portrait inside the letter "M", Skorina gave a hint to its decoding. The ancient Greek sign on the woman's forehead stands for Medusa, defeated by Perseus who was guided by the image reflected at the mirror surface of his shield while fighting with her. The mirror is used as a symbol at Skorina's self-portrait. Finally, Grigory Reviako discovered that Skorina placed the portrait of Konstantin Ostrozhsky inside the letter "A". Prince Ostrozhsky financed the printing of Skorina's Bible. This gesture of homage to the patron reminds us of Raphael's attempt to repay the kindness of his benefactor.

The Belarusian first printer used symbolic language to tell about himself. for example, he encoded the date of his birth in his self-portrait. He also encoded the information about hi social status by placing himself between two bears. The two bears point at the constellations of the Big Bear and Little Bear with the constellation of Draco between them. At the Middle Ages the Draco, as a symbol of dragons, was used to refer to enlightened people, and Skorina with two Doctor degrees was one of them. His self-portrait emphasized the value of knowledge. It is symbolized in the scroll, half covered with a coverlet with the sign of half moon. Astrology uses this sign to refer to the so-called lunar home that usually points at the location of a treasure or another valuable thing.

In short, there are still a lot of undiscovered treasures because the density of symbols in Skorina's drawings looks impressive. The most surprising thing is that all these symbols, along with non-canonic scripts of old text, are found in the Bible, a book closed for any deviations from the traditions.