In a way I admire Dan Brown. His books are filled with errors and general foolishness and his writing style is rather cringeworthy; I think he is a very good specimen of a generation of authors who not learned their craft by reading other literature but by watching television. It shows in the structure of his books. They can be converted into movies very neatly. In fact, when reading Dan Brown I always had a very clear feeling where exactly the commercial breaks would fit in.
But it is effective! I am sure, his goal has never been to win the Nobel price for literature but to accomplish that which he has accomplished. Which nobody else in the world has pulled off quite like him. Millions of people have read and bought his stuff and quite a few think it is real. It was made into major movies before the ink was even dry. (Now that’s an exaggeration but you know what I mean.) It’s one hell of an accomplishment.
Speaking of errors in Dan Brown’s books: By this I don’t mean all that historic stuff about Jesus, Leonardo, the Illuminati, even the Opus Dei. I don’t mean having a counterfactual base to your plot. I don’t even mean lying and deceiving to make it more believable. This is just the way of fiction and it isn’t a bad thing. Do we think less of Indiana Jones because the Holy Grail isn’t actually hidden in Syria? Do we think less of Stargate because the Pharaos weren’t actually extraterrestrial parasitic worms?
No, what I mean is little things that should have been correct and aren’t. I will soon write a short article that gives an example of such a thing.
This being said, I have to contradict myself. I don’t mind taking liberties with history (in fact I love them) as long as they are not presented as fact! As long as it is a literary game and not meant to convince me that this is the way it really happened. But this is what Brown does in the Da Vinci Code. (In his other books he does not, and so I don’t have a thing against them). As long as I can ignore it, I can take it as fiction in the same way as Indiana Jones, or Stargate or whatever. But when I feel that he presents his story as fact, then I feel the urge to contradict and disprove. And I am clearly not alone in this. There are quite a few books and documentaries and filmed lectures by various scholars around that consider and disprove, in meticulous detail, every single point of Brown and of Leigh, Baigent and Lincoln, from whom he took his theory. On the other hand I’m yet to find a book that tries do disprove Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell or The Discovery of Slowness.
Although I really don’t intend to duplicate any of these efforts, I would like to add here a little piece of evidence I found myself, which, at least for me, would demolish one of Dan Brown major points very elegantly, even if there were no other ways to do it.
Some while ago I visited in the Alte Pinakothek art museum in Munich, Germany, where I came across a certain painting by the french artist Nicholas Poussin titled The Lamentation of Christ.
As you undoubtedly know, one of Browns major points is, that one person in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, is not, as commonly believed, John the apostle, but rather Mary Magdalene. The debatable person is shown in the detail image in the left.
The right one is a detail from The Lamentation of Christ and the description on the plaque tells us the painting does indeed feature Mary Magdalene. They look similar, don’t they?
Incidentally, Poussin is deeply mixed up in the whole business. One painting of his, The Arcadian Shepherds is claimed by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln to depict the real tomb of Jesus as well as containing hints in the form of an anagram of the latin phrase “et in arcadia ego” which appears in the painting. Clearly Poussin must have been in on the secret.
Now where is the catch? Simple. The catch is that the person shown in the detail of the Lamentation is not Mary Magdalene. How do we know? Because Mary Magdalene is there, right in the center of the painting. This is her:
Looks more female too, doesn’t she? The other person is—guess who?—John the apostle. This means, that an artist who would have known if it was not the apostle but Mary in Leonardo’s painting chose to paint the same person but this time it really is the apostle, because it can’t be Mary. This just doesn’t sound credible to me and so I conclude that it was John all along.
Of course I don’t expect to convince anyone with this find who does not want to be convinced and it isn’t proof in the way I understand the word (as a mathematician) either. In fact it is easy enough to concoct several theories which still allow John the apostle to be seen as Mary Magdalene in Leonardo’s painting. Let me see:
- Poussin had not even seen Leonardo’s work and all is a conincidence really.
- Poussin painted the apostle like Leonardo because he did not know it was Mary really, as Leonardo had not even told his friends in the Prieuré de Sion this particular secret.
- It is Mary in both paintings and the woman is some other woman, whose name we don’t know.
- Poussin knew Leonardo’s secret and feared people would find out, so he produced a painting to convince people it wasn’t Mary in the Last Supper and thus allay suspicion.
In some perverse way, I am amused by the last theory because it is perfect accord with conspirational thinking. In fact, if you prefer one of these to my own explanation, have fun! Just don’t quote me.
(Go here to see part 2!)
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