The Paintings Featured in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” Book
The Da Vinci Code plays on many of the theories and mysteries that have long followed Leonardo Da Vinci and his eccentric methods around for the last 500 years. Despite the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, the book and film utilized numerous other paintings to make points about Da Vinci’s ties to the Priory of Scion. Many of those images, some of Da Vinci’s most enduring and famous legacies, have been around for years.
Madonna of the Rocks 1483
As the painting in the Louvre behind which is hidden the key Langdon finds before escaping the police, the Madonna of the Rocks is yet another incredible famous Da Vinci image. Da Vinci painted two versions of his famous first commission. The first of these two versions is that of the 1483 Madonna of the Rocks. Originally commissioned by the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception, the painting was to be an altar piece but was not completed at the time required of the contract with Da Vinci. For that reason, it was left unfinished for the better part of two years. However, because of its popularity, the painting was eventually painted again for another church’s same altar piece, that being the version that remains today in the London Gallery. In the Da Vinci code, it is remarked that this version of the painting was considered heretical by the church with Jesus kneeling to John and numerous symbols of femininity and masculinity littered throughout the rocky landscape.
Madonna of the Rocks 1508
The second version of Da Vinci’s famous image of Jesus and John meeting on the trip to Egypt is located today in the London Gallery and was painted over 20 years after the original. The painting is believed to have been the result of the excessive popularity of the first, thus commissioned as a copy. Leonardo is not believed to have painted the entire work alone, though his contributions are noted by the shading and characteristic tones of his painting. In the Da Vinci Code, the London copy of the Madonna of the Rocks was supposedly the second version created by Da Vinci to mollify the enraged Church after his heretical first painting.
Adoration of the Magi
As one of Da Vinci’s original commissions, The Adoration of the Magi was never quite finished. Today it sits in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The painting itself depicts the traditional image of the wisest of men in the land bowing before the infant Christ. Thought the image was never completed, much has been made of the symbolism found in it by novels such as the Da Vinci Code. Located in back, beside the Tree are two figures that Brown denotes as Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Behind them is a Knight Templar and the careful constructed “V” shape in an onlooker’s hand is meant to represent femininity. The painting itself was left unfinished as Da Vinci left for Milan before he was able to get beyond the preliminary sketching stage of the commission.
Vitruvian Man
The Vitruvian Man is a simple drawing found in Leonardo’s notebooks that has become one of his most enduring works, a symbol of art and science in unison and the perfect geometry and proportions that so intrigued him. The work depicts two poses of a man stretched out within a square and a circle, designed to show the perfect proportions of the male body as described by the Ancient Roman, Vitruvius and revised by Leonardo himself. In the Da Vinci Code, the French Curator of the Louvre is found dead in this pose, utilizing the geometry of the original to leave a message for Langdon and his granddaughter.
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