Friday, February 20, 2004

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown


A murder mystery set against a religious conspiracy theory involving Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, their child and the Holy Grail, The Da Vinci Code mixes page-turning suspense with art history, architecture and religious history. — Ayesha Court



The Secret Life of Leonardo da Vinci 
A prankster and genius, Leonardo da Vinci is widely believed to have hidden secret messages within much of his artwork. Most scholars agree that even Da Vinci's most famous pieces—works like The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and Madonna of the Rocks—contain startling anomalies that all seem to be whispering the same cryptic message…a message that hints at a shocking historical secret which allegedly has been guarded since 1099 by a European secret society known as the Priory of Sion. In 1975, Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. French President, Francois Mitterrand, is rumored to have been a member, although there exists no proof of this.

Here is what we can say about Jesus’ sex life: 
Most mainstream biblical scholars do not believe Jesus was married to anyone, because the Gospels don’t mention it.  A few biblical scholars argue it’s likely Jesus was married--even though the Bible doesn’t mention it—because Jewish men at that time nearly always married. These scholars tend not to care one way or another whether his wife was Mary Magdalene. According to the New Testament: The Gospels say Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jesus and that, according to Luke 8, she supported him out of her own means, meaning that she was probably wealthy. She was the first, or among the first, to discover the empty tomb.

Mona Lisa
Never in the history of Art has one painting been so admired. This is due largely to the enigmatic smile, which has caused much speculation. Nowhere can be found any records of the Mona Lisa model sitting.  Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that Leonardo painted himself, She digitized both the self-portrait of the artist and the Mona Lisa. She flipped the self portrait and merged the two images together using a computer. She noticed the features of the face aligned perfectly!