Almighty Colin
03-04-2004, 07:00 AM
OK, so I still haven't read the Da Vinci Code yet. It takes a lot to get me to pick up a fiction book. What do you think of this review at Amazon? I'm worried the book will annoy me ...
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I have two degrees in art history. The assertions made about Leonardo Da Vinci's work in this book are not just wrong, they are ridiculous. To cite a key example: the apostle to the right of Jesus in Leonardo's LAST SUPPER is not Mary Magdalene, and could never have been intended as such. It is John, "the disciple loved by the Lord." The fact that this figure could not be Mary Magdalene is proven by the existence of preliminary sketches for the LAST SUPPER (now in the Accademia, in Venice) which Leonardo made of each apostle. Not only did he make sketches of each apostle, he LABELED them. Again, no Mary Magdalene, and no hint of such. (And if it is Mary, where oh where is John? Leonardo never would have left him out.) Moreover, the reason there is no chalice in this painting is not owing to the preposterous assumption that Leonardo was painting Mary Magdalene as the Holy Grail. (It always helps to LOOK AT THE PICTURE.) The moment Leonardo chose to depict is NOT the institution of the Eucharist (which would have included a chalice), but the earlier moment recorded in the gospels, when Jesus says that one of the apostles will betray him. This accounts for the emotional displays on all of the apostles' faces, including that of Judas, which is in shadow. To read any other meaning into this painting (a union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the presence of the letter "M" -- where?)is not just ludicrous, it defies belief. (For anyone seeking more on this topic, I refer you to Frederick Hartt's HISTORY OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART, published by Prentice-Hall/Abrams.)
I wanted to have fun with this book, and for the first two-thirds, I did, despite the fact that Dan Brown dangles more participles than all the vines in California dangle grapes. But once the main character (from Harvard!) and another academic (from Oxford! Agh!) started trying to fit Leonardo's paintings to the Procrustean bed of their Holy Grail theories, they lost me. When a friend called yesterday and said there was an article in the New York Times claiming that THE DA VINCI CODE was based on "accurate historical research," I gagged. I've never written a negative review on Amazon before, but I felt I had to alert readers to, as it were, "the facts of the case."
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I have two degrees in art history. The assertions made about Leonardo Da Vinci's work in this book are not just wrong, they are ridiculous. To cite a key example: the apostle to the right of Jesus in Leonardo's LAST SUPPER is not Mary Magdalene, and could never have been intended as such. It is John, "the disciple loved by the Lord." The fact that this figure could not be Mary Magdalene is proven by the existence of preliminary sketches for the LAST SUPPER (now in the Accademia, in Venice) which Leonardo made of each apostle. Not only did he make sketches of each apostle, he LABELED them. Again, no Mary Magdalene, and no hint of such. (And if it is Mary, where oh where is John? Leonardo never would have left him out.) Moreover, the reason there is no chalice in this painting is not owing to the preposterous assumption that Leonardo was painting Mary Magdalene as the Holy Grail. (It always helps to LOOK AT THE PICTURE.) The moment Leonardo chose to depict is NOT the institution of the Eucharist (which would have included a chalice), but the earlier moment recorded in the gospels, when Jesus says that one of the apostles will betray him. This accounts for the emotional displays on all of the apostles' faces, including that of Judas, which is in shadow. To read any other meaning into this painting (a union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the presence of the letter "M" -- where?)is not just ludicrous, it defies belief. (For anyone seeking more on this topic, I refer you to Frederick Hartt's HISTORY OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART, published by Prentice-Hall/Abrams.)
I wanted to have fun with this book, and for the first two-thirds, I did, despite the fact that Dan Brown dangles more participles than all the vines in California dangle grapes. But once the main character (from Harvard!) and another academic (from Oxford! Agh!) started trying to fit Leonardo's paintings to the Procrustean bed of their Holy Grail theories, they lost me. When a friend called yesterday and said there was an article in the New York Times claiming that THE DA VINCI CODE was based on "accurate historical research," I gagged. I've never written a negative review on Amazon before, but I felt I had to alert readers to, as it were, "the facts of the case."