If you devoured Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and accepted every word you read as truth, you're not alone. But there's something you should know before you try to hunt down the grail or marry into the Merovingian line: Not all of it is true.
Responses to the novel fall into three general categories:
- It's truth: The Da Vinci Code explains the whole history of Western civilization, and wow — what a revelation! I'm never going to church again!
- It's good movie stuff: It's amusing and a little unbelievable, but entertaining.
- It's all lies, lies, and more lies: The novel is pure garbage, completely beyond all rational credibility.
Your views probably also depend, to a certain extent, on how you see Christianity.
But where does Leonardo da Vinci fit into the story? Author Dan Brown cites Leonardo as the author of the "codes" because, as former grand master of the Priory of Sion, Leo supposedly placed secret clues, symbols, and hidden anti-Christian messages pointing to the truth about Christianity in his paintings. Thus, understanding his life and art is crucial to the quest of the book's main characters, Langdon and Sophie.
Having a thorough knowledge of Leonardo's life and work, you couldn't possibly read The Da Vinci Code with a straight face. Some fast-paced writing and thrilling subplots will keep you turning the pages, but they mask many exaggerations and half-truths about the artist and inventor.
Fun facts and fallacies
Consider some simple facts about Leonardo's life (as compared to Dan Brown's claims in The Da Vinci Code).
- Leonardo's art is on the skimpy side. Brown refers to Leonardo's massive output of Christian art and "hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions." But Leonardo was anything but a prolific artist. He was a terrible procrastinator, rarely finishing what he started. All told, he has a few shy of 30 existing, individual pieces of artwork (not including his drawings). In addition, Leonardo spent very little time in Rome. While he was there, he didn't receive hundreds of commissions from Pope Leo X, but conducted mostly scientific experiments.
- Leo's sexual preferences are in the gray. Brown calls Leonardo a "flamboyant" homosexual. No solid proof, even with his (dismissed) charges of sodomy and close friendships with male students, says that Leonardo was gay. His sexual orientation may forever remain a mystery.
- Leonardo's religious beliefs aren't crystal clear. No one's quite certain about Leonardo's exact religious beliefs, but in Brown's hands, he comes off as a rebellious genius, obsessed with rejecting Christianity. Yet no evidence shows that Leonardo opposed the Catholic Church or was radical in his spiritual beliefs and slightly anticlerical sentiment. Brown writes that Leonardo lived "in an age when science was synonymous with heresy." Certainly, as a scientist, Leonardo experienced some tension with church officials over dissections, for example. However, the church often supported scientific research during the Renaissance. And Leonardo kept an open mind about exploring the world around him, using his experience in nature as a starting point for comprehending a larger God or force behind nature's complexity.
Uncovering the hidden clues in his art
How accurately does Brown portray Leonardo's art in The Da Vinci Code? Did the artist, in fact, leave secret messages about Jesus and Mary Magdalene's marital life together? Or is Brown just leading one big campaign smear against poor Leo, finding arcane religious messages at every turn? Take a look at Leonardo's artwork to find out.
Virgin of the Rocks
Brown claims that the painting Virgin of the Rocks (the Louvre version, anyway — two versions exist) contains "explosive and disturbing details" and anti-Church messages. As a result, he says, the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception that commissioned it rejected it. Not true. Actually, Leonardo didn't finish the painting and ended up in a lengthy lawsuit over it.
Here are some other fine details about the painting (from Brown's perspective) that don't hold water:
- John the Baptist was the real CEO. Brown misidentifies the sitters in the painting. He mixes up baby Jesus and John the Baptist, which allows him to claim that the baby John blessed Jesus. According to the author, this idea shows John's authority over Jesus, when, in fact, the reality is the other way around! By mixing up his characters, Brown suggests that Leonardo thought that the Church of John, whatever that was, operated as a parallel church at the time of Christ. As a result, Jesus may have suffered from some sort of inferiority complex!
- The hand that rocks the cradle . . . Brown attributes deep, menacing meanings to the angel Uriel's hand and the Virgin Mary's, which hovers over Jesus's head. How about protection?
Want more? Here are some other tidbits Brown got wrong about the Virgin of the Rocks:
- The nuns did it. Brown talks about nuns commissioning the painting (which he calls by its other name, Madonna of the Rocks). In fact, the Confraternity housed only men.
- You can fold it up and put it in your pocket. In one scene, the character Sophie uses Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks as a shield around her body. However, the tall painting, about 6-1/2 feet high and in a wooden frame, would never have bent. Sophie would have to be an Amazon to lift it up as a shield.
The Last Supper
Brown takes liberties when discussing Leonardo's The Last Supper. He bases his analysis of The Last Supper on his assumption that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were hitched. Once again, this idea fits into his thesis about the Church's big coverup.
Folks, here's the proof according to Brown:
- Jesus's leading lady is at his right hand. If you thought that blondish bombshell to Jesus's right (actually the left, when you're looking at the painting) is the Apostle John, think again. Brown argues that the figure seated to Jesus's right is not John, as is commonly thought, but Mary Magdalene. In this painting, Leonardo supposedly communicated his knowledge of their marriage and his belief that Mary, not Peter, was the true leader of the church. The clues? Langdon and Sophie find significance in the M shape seen in the composition of figures John, Jesus, and Peter. This M, of course, stands for Mary Magdalene. The V shape between St. John/Mary and Jesus represents the grail, the chalice, and the female womb, according to the character Teabing (the windbag), a scholar elucidating matters of religion to Langdon. The quest for the Holy Grail is, by extension, the quest for Mary's final resting place.
You can't deny that John does have some feminine traits, with his long hair, soft face, and delicate paws. So what? Leonardo explains his decision to depict John as younger and less manly in his Treatise on Painting, where he discusses the different types of people. Each person should be painted according to his or her age and lot in life, he wrote. In typical Renaissance art, artists portrayed a protégé as very youthful, longhaired, and clean-shaven. Leonardo's John in The Last Supper, far from being a disguised Mary Magdalene, conforms to this type.
Besides, if John is really Mary, then where's John?
- Peter is one malicious man. In the painting, Brown interprets Peter (the pointing man leaning in between Jesus and Judas; Judas's face is in shadow) as supposedly wielding a threatening knife, leaning in to Jesus (and by extension, his wife) with evil intent. Oh, stop the nonsense already and see for yourself. Peter's just trying to defend his main man, not kill him!
- The grail isn't what you think it is. Leonardo didn't include a chalice in the painting, which only reinforces Brown's claim that the Holy Grail wasn't a chalice, but Mary Magdalene's womb. Scholars ask why Leonardo should have included a chalice, a special cup for Jesus, which differed from the other apostles' cups. Brown apparently forgot that The Last Supper depicts the moment following Jesus's announcement that one of his fellas would betray him — not the moment of the Eucharist, though each apostle has a cup and some bread in front of him for further instruction. Still, Brown gets clever, pointing out that the French expression for the Holy Grail is San gréal, a play on Sang réal, which means "royal blood."
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