Christianity Online: Response to The Da Vinci Code as Imp ...

In the current evaluation, a one-sided message from a church group may argue only for the dominance of its own position. A two-sided message would take on the fuller controversy over Da Vinci by stating the position to be opposed and then attacking it. Generally, it seems that a Web audience (given the nature of the technology) may be sophisticated and fairly well-educated, and it is likely that such an audience would have been preexposed to at least some of the tenets of Brown’s novel.

What Role Leonardo?

Even as a premier artist of the High Renaissance in Europe, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519 AD) was known to embed within his work some perceptual mischief. Always admired as a Renaissance man, as well as scientist and inventor in his later years, his two most famous paintings continue to inspire appreciation. But they also raise a few questions that no scholar has been able to answer with absolute and definitive resolve.

For the reader, a task: Look at the portrait Mona Lisa (circa 1504) and ask “why is this woman smiling?”—especially against a backdrop of confused landscape and endless roads. Erudition cannot be applied to determine her motivation to smirk. (Given Leonardo’s alacrity in painting androgynous figures, one cannot even be sure that Mona Lisa is female. Look again.)

Now gaze at Leonardo’s The Last Supper (circa 1495), and the questioning mind can detect more artistic playfulness. Other Last Supper paintings had been rendered (such as that by Andrea Del Castagno, done in roughly 1445 AD), but none with the sfumato or smokiness seen in some of Leonardo’s work (Janson, 1973, pp. 328, 348–352; Tansey & Kleiner, 1996, p. 734).