Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci was an amazing
guy. But let's get one thing straight:
he didn't have a fucking code.
That's no slam on da Vinci, of cour.
He painted some of the most
memorable images in history,
including "The Last Supper" and the
"Mona Lisa." And his science was as
impressive as his art. An engineer
and architect, da Vinci invented the
helicopter 400 years before there was
such a thing as a combustion engine.
Many of his inventions are still ud
today in one form or another, such as the hygrometer, the transmission drive, the ball-bearing axle and the machine gun.
But there was no da Vinci code. Sorry. Get over it.
Leonardo was born in 1452, near Tuscany in Italy, the bastard son of a local nobleman. He was reportedly an artistic prodigy, who was allowed to pore through his father's library (although he was never recognized as a legitimate offspring). As a child, he was fascinated by art, anatomy and nature.
At the tender age of 14, da Vinci traveled to the big city, Florence, where he became an apprentice to a very successful artist of the day named Andrea del Verrocchio, who is best remembered for such classic well, OK, he's best remembered for having Leonardo as an apprentice. The judgments of history are cold and heartless.
del Verrocchio had a number of talented students who
"assisted" him in painting his most successful works, in the
custom of the day. Leonardo spent his days and nights
hanging out with Verricchio, his fellow apprentices and other
luminaries of the Florence art scene.
Now, you may be thinking that "teenage boy in the big city lives with grown-up artists" sounds a bit fishy, but it was a perfectly acceptable situation within the historical context.
The perfectly acceptable social
context didn't stop da Vinci from
turning out completely queer, of
cour. Florence was very much the
San Francisco of its day; at the time,
the German word for homoxual
literally translated as "Florentine." At
age 24, da Vinci was formally
charged with sodomy, although
nothing ever came of it. The charge,
that is.
In 1477,
Verrochio made a painting titled "The Baptism of Christ," a
project which Leonardo assisted by painting an angel on the
far left of the picture. Although it's not immediately apparent
to the untrained eye (or even to the trained eye), the angel
illustration was so dazzlingly great that it made the rest of the painting look like a piece of total crap.
According to legend, Verrocchio swore he would never paint again, so humiliated was he by his student's superior talent. Apparently unaware of the legend, Verrocchio appears to have continued painting after 1477 (or, more accurately, he continued to sign his name on the paintings made by his students), but he did refocus his work on sculpture as the years went on.
On the heels of this fabulous (if slightly apocryphal) triumph, da Vinci t out to make his own way in the world. His first major commission was a painting for a nearby monastery. "The Adoration of the Magi" was a pia-toned panel that was never quite finished but is still considered great. With momentum on his side and the public humiliation of the aforementioned sodomy charge nipping at his heels, da Vinci decided it was time to move on up to Milan, where the local duke offered him a patronage.
During his 17 years in Milan, da Vinci made numerous sketches and a few really amazing paintings, including his most famous work, "The Last Supper." "The Last Supper" is one of tho things. Or rather, it's one of tho things, tho strange
artifacts of culture (like Shakespeare's Hamlet) that swell beyond their physical bounds to become a
swirling object of obssive deconstruction through the ages.
On the face of it, "The Last Supper" is just one of about eleventy-zillion painting depicting Jesus Christ and his Apostles enjoying their last big shindig before the centurions arrive for the opening act of the Crucifixion. Admittedly, it's a pretty good version of the tableaux, and it's an unusually big one at 29 feet wide, painted on the wall of a Milane convent. Leonardo painted "The Last Supper" over the cour of three years, working at the behest of his patron, the Duke of Milan.
Artistically, "The Last Supper" is exceptional -- and for veral hundred years, that was all anyone had to say about, except for "It's not holding up very well, is it?" The painting was made using an experimental new technique, which was unfortunately not very durable. Numerous restorations have been attempted over the centuries, with varying degrees of success.
After Leo's death, "The Last Supper" became the object of a bizarre 20th century fetish cult that believes there are cret messages hidden in every square inch of wall. At first the province of obscure scholars and authors, the theories slowly ballooned into the public eye, culminating in the publication of The Da Vinci Code, a 2003 best-ller that lifted elements from a dozen ancient conspiracy theories, including tales of the Knights Templar, the Cathars, and the Holy Grail.
The theory propounded by the book -- that Jesus didn't die on the cross, but in fact survived to father a line of French kings -- is not terribly outrageous, but it's also not proven. The major plot point of the "code" is bad on analysis of the painting's tiniest details, which happen to loom rather large when you view the picture at its
original 27-foot width.
The connection between da Vinci and the Jesus bloodline
was first outlined in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who
authors have sued the publisher of The da Vinci Code for
plagiarism. According to the authors, Leonardo was the
Grand Master of a cret society protecting the cret of
Jesus' escape from the cross. A popular variation on the
theory propos that Leonardo may have been responsible
for forging the Shroud of Turin, although the historical
evidence for that claim is as sketchy as any other part of this mass of theories.
While the Jesus bloodline theory is actually pretty interesting, and not completely outside the realm of possibility, the da Vinci part of the premi is the weakest from an educated perspective. Virtually no one with a shred of credibility believes The Last Supper is Leonardo's coded message from beyond the grave about the paternity of Christ. (Then again, during Leonardo's life, virtually no one with a shred of credibility believed the earth was
round, either.)
Anyway, after veral successful
years in Milan, da Vinci returned in
triumph to Florence, where he was hailed
as a conquering artistic hero. Leo traded up
