DaVinci Code (I know, I know!)

[andycal]

OK, just reading this at the moment and although its literary worth is suspect (it's an obivous 'Crichton-esque' nod at Hollywood) and he's played with the facts somewhat - it has still piqued my interest.

Having just read the bit about the last supper - I took a look and there as plain as day is a woman sat next to JC.

Now, obviously the tale of the Grail is well documented, but being new to the whole thing, does anyone have any pointers to some decent, historical and well-regarded resources?

 

[Oleron]

A good starting point for your grail quest is this article in Skeptic magazine. (about halfway down the link). It is a review of the Davinci code by Tim Callahan.

I highly recommend his books also, he really knows his stuff when it comes to xian history.

 

[andycal]

Thanks for the headsup bud. I'm off to buy some more books...

 

[RSLancastr]

I would also recommend Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Holy Crap!, by me, if I ever get around to writing it.

 

[andycal]

Hmmm, interesting title.... I may have some material for it soon, fancy a joint venture?

 

[rppa]

Having just read the bit about the last supper - I took a look and there as plain as day is a woman sat next to JC.

Or not.

Be careful about such definitive statements. The last supper is a fresco which has been decaying steadily since Da Vinci painted it. There have been several attempts to restore it, most of which have worsened it because he used a secret technique which was not well understood. Those crystal clear "Last Suppers" you see are not photographs of the original.

Second, the figure which is a woman "as plain as day" was, up till Dan Brown's book, identified as St. John the Evangelist, and John's effeminite appearance was the fashion for the depiction of young men amongLeonardo's art circle, the Florentine School.

Check out this article: http://arthistory.about.com/od/renaissanceart/a/altheyoungdudes.htm and follow the links. You will see a number of depictions of young men who "as plain as day" are women.

 

[andycal]

Absolutley agree, which is why I'm reading into it. We had quite a discussion in the office today, three of us examining the picture, and also other pictures of the last supper.

The book might be popcorn tat, but you've got to hand it to Dan Brown, he's got people talking.

 

[andycal]

Hmmm, although a lot of it is down to interpretation of the images, I've gone through (I think) all of the pictures listed on the About.com site and I'm not convinced.

Examining each image shows that yes, the people depicted are probably 'effeminate', but you can usually tell that it's a fella. It's not a convincing argument.

I'm not saying Leonardo's is a woman, and indeed, if the image was 'lady-like' as per the style of the era and it was restored, it could be that the people restoring it simply enhanced the female looks, losing anything that Leonardo put in.

 

[Garrette]

I also recommend "Secrets of the DaVinci Code" by I-Can't-Remember.

It's a collection of essays/articles by various authors about some of the claims in the DaVinci Code. They seem, at first, to be slanted heavily toward the believer side, but it turns out that the book's author/editor thinks the whole idea is pretty much bunk but fun bunk.


Regarding The Last Supper, I can sort of accept the idea of an effeminate John, but I have yet to find an explanation for the hand holding the knife. Any ideas?

{Edited to add}: Of course, my failure to find an explanation for the knife means that I unequivocably accept all the conspiracy and secret society stuff Dan Brown writes about. After all, if I can't think of a reason, it must be because someone is hiding it from me. Don't you agree?

 

[shecky]

{Edited to add}: Of course, my failure to find an explanation for the knife means that I unequivocably accept all the conspiracy and secret society stuff Dan Brown writes about. After all, if I can't think of a reason, it must be because someone is hiding it from me. Don't you agree?

Of course! Whenever you don't understand something, it must be because the powers that be want it that way. Or the magic of the Man In The Sky.

 

[epepke]

Re: Re: DaVinci Code (I know, I know!)

Be careful about such definitive statements. The last supper is a fresco which has been decaying steadily since Da Vinci painted it.

It was even a problem when Da Vinci painted it. The environment wasn't right for a fresco. They did a lot of stuff to try to get it to come out right and then eventually gave up.

 

[richardm]

Re: Re: DaVinci Code (I know, I know!)

Or not.

Be careful about such definitive statements. The last supper is a fresco which has been decaying steadily since Da Vinci painted it. There have been several attempts to restore it

There are some good example images here showing the figure in question before, during and after restoration. There's also a large photo that clearly shows the parlous state of the fresco.

Note that they are still calling that figure "John".

 

[Skeptic]

"Skeptic" magazine put it best: first, it's John, not Mary, in the picture. Second, if it IS Mary... where is John?

 

[Achán hiNidráne]

I thought that all this "Priore de Sion" conspiracy stuff was debunked long ago.

 

[Chaos]

I thought that all this "Priore de Sion" conspiracy stuff was debunked long ago.

Since when does debunking stuff actually stop anyone?

... if the debunking isn´t actually conspiracy cover-up, that is...

 

[Achán hiNidráne]

To quote my favorite source of all things woo-woo (and how to use them in role-playing game campaigns), Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmissions:

The Prieuré de Sion made thei most public bow in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a peculiar bestsell about the secret history of Christianity (see page 124). That bood drew from a series of (most likely forged; see note 7, pg 82) manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Both manuscripts and book evangelize the notion that the Merovingians, the first dynasty of Frankish kings (see note 3, p. 119, and pp. 157-58), actually held a Scared Bloodline (implicitly that of Jesus Christ). The troubadours, Templars, Cathars, esoteric Freemasons, and Rosicrucians have guarded this secret in turn, "front organizations" for the shadowy Prieuré.

One of the key "clues" in all this is a 1642 painting by Nicolas Poussin titled The Shepherds of Arcadia supposesly depicting the true tomp of Christ; hence any mention of "Arcadia" (either before of after Poussin painted, it doesnt' matter) therefore signals Prieuré machinations. (For more details, see Holy Blood, Holy Grail, or pp. 160-162.)

--Suppressed Transmissions, note 9, p. 41.

They're as bloodline-obsessed as the Prieuré de Sion (note 9, p. 41), and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if they didn't turn out to have even more in common. Especially since there's a pretty solid case for considering the "Prieuré documents" on which the whole canard is based as occult propaganda by a coterie of French fascist Vichy supporters. Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (see Note 1, p. 77) demonstrates that French fascism could be just as mystically loopy as its German cousin."

--Supressed Transmissions, note 7, p. 82

 

[Jabberwock]

Here's an article on Salon that discusses the historical underpinnings of the novel
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/12/29/da_vinci_code/

Regarading the Priory:
In reality, the Priory of Sion was the invention, in the 1950s, of a man named Pierre Plantard who had a history of fraud, embezzlement and membership in ultra-conservative, quasi-mystical and virulently anti-Semitic Catholic groups. ...
Plantard learned of rumors surrounding a town in southern France, where the late priest's unexplained affluence led to talk of buried treasure in the local church. ... With his accomplice, a genuine but dissolute aristocrat and expert forger, Phillipe de Chérisey, he produced a set of fabricated parchments full of encoded and suggestively prophetic verse alluding to this Merovingian fantasy. With a restaurateur interested in drumming up tourist business for his establishment (located in the priest's former villa), they disseminated a story that the priest had discovered these parchments in the church, inside a hollowed-out pillar of Visigoth origins. ...
The parchments and a variety of other faked documents pertaining to the Priory of Sion and the Merovingians -- including that list of past Grand Masters, featuring Leonardo and Newton -- were planted in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This institution, alas, cannot be said to run a tight ship, and there are apparently no records indicating who exactly deposited the infamous "dossiers secrets" in their collection. However, investigators eventually determined that the printing press used to produce them was the same press used by Plantard to print his right-wing newsletters and broadsides. ...
In the subsequent police investigation, Plantard was forced to admit he'd invented the whole thing.