(I thought I has posted this last night but I couldn’t get back into the boards after I’d sent ‘Send.’ My apologies if this is a re-post!)
This best-seller is a really good, intelligent thriller and well worth reading.
OK. I went to a talk by the author, Dan Brown, last night and he gave an informative presentation of many of the subtle swipes at the Catholic Church hidden within Da Vinci’s work. Good stuff.
When Brown took questions, someone in the audience asked, “Who is the widow’s son?” (This question, by the way, has nothing to do with the plot of ‘The Da Vinci Code’). Brown said that so far “only three people in the country have discovered this clue.” Apparently, if you look on the inside flap at the back of the book (where the author’s photo is), you can just barely see that some of the letters are just barely (and I mean barely)in a slightly larger font than the rest of the jacket. The larger letters seem to spell out ‘the widow’s son.’
I asked Brown what it meant but he wouldn’t tell me. He said, “Do an internet search…it has something to do with a future book.” (To be entirely truthful here, Brown might have been a little put off with me when I asked if he’d sign a copy of his book ‘Dear Highest eBay Bidder…’)
Anyway. Does anyone have any idea what this puzzle means?
Well, you have bumped it and I have read it. Given the mind set of Brown’s novel you can take it that “the widow’s son” refers to the off spring of Mary Magdalene and the Savior, that is, some one in the family line. You may assume that the “widow’s son” reference has some Masonic (and thus Knight Templer) significance. It is reported that after Confederate General Armistead was wounded in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, he obtained assistance by calling for aid for the widow’s son.
As for the book, I thought it was a lame and improbable a piece of hide-the-ball fantasy as anyone is likely to run into. Of course, I’m not a murder mystery sort of guy. I read it hoping for insights into the work of the great Leonardo. There weren’t any.
I’ve never heard of the book or author before. But, this intrigued me.
What swipes did Leo hide in his work?
I know that Michelangelo disected corpses and left the evidence on the Sistine chapel's ceiling. In the Creation Of Adam panel, God rests upon a flock of cherubim. The flock is side view of the human brain complete with such details as frontal lobe and hypothalmus.
DocCathode asked,
What swipes did Leo hide in his work?
Well, I don’t want to give any of the book’s plot away, but Da Vinci apparently painted Mary Magdalene into ‘The Last Supper.’ She’s the aposotle to the left of Jesus as you look at the painting. I’d never noticed it before but that ‘guy’ is pretty obviously a woman!
Also, how could Da Vinci leave something as obvious as the Holy Grail OUT of ‘The Last Supper?’ (The answer to this question figures pretty heavily in the plot of the novel…)
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but isn’t The Last Supper almost entirely the work of artists attempting to ‘restore’ it? IIRC, The painting was disliked. No attempts were made to protect it. Part of the mural was removed when a door was put into the wall. By the time somebody decided to restore and preserve it, it was mostly blurs.
Somehow I got the crazy idea to do an Internet search and came up with the following and learned that “the widow’s son” often refers to a miracle in the New Testament (Luke 7:11-17). www.jesuswalk.com/lessons/7_11-17.htm
The Masonic “widow’s son” is Hiram Abif, one of the masons who supposedly discovered the sacred treasure under the Temple of Solomon.
Having read the Da Vinci Code, I would expect both meanings, if not others, to come into play.
I enjoyed the book as an adventure story with some amusing brain-teasers. In terms of history and theology, it’s probably a little more reliable than “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Well, I don’t want to give any of the book’s plot away, but
… you did!
Well, I DID put a spoiler warning in the heading, but I don’t really see how knowing that Da Vinci painted Mary into ‘The Last Supper’ really gives THAT much of the plot away.
I’d like to just offer an art historian’s wail of distress here.
Aieeeaghhh!
Nitpicking moment:
(second time this week someone’s brought up this book, and such “obvious” facts as that John the Beloved Disciple on JC’s right (as usual) is Mary Magdalene. That’s not a chick, people, unless the second disciple from out left and the fourth from our right are also chicks).
If you open up your art history survey text you will also note no grail in Andrea del Castagno’s version, and while the tables are covered with stuff in Veronese and Tintoretto’s versions no grail is given any priority, pictorially (I can’t find anything that is clearly a grail). Doesn’t seem so strange, though.
The Last Supper is in crappy condition because he did a one-time technical experiment with “oil fresco”-- bad idea.
BUT we were talking about a work of fiction, so I let this rest. Let’s just not confuse his novel with anything what might have historically taken place. I have no beef with the guy’s book, in itself.
Christ raises from the dead a widow’s son in Luke (Lazarus?). . . and in Gnostic writings Horus is called the widow’s son. Chretien du Troyes and Wolfram van Eschenbach refer to Parzival as a widow’s son (he is the one that finally finds the grail, right? Or sees it at the Fisher King’s banquet but doesn’t recognize what it is. . . ?) Does that help at all?
Oh, and also, IIRC, the “grail” in de Troyes’ Parzival isn’t even quite described as a chalice or cup of any kind-- it’s something more like a plate or paten-- the id of the grail as a cup seems to come along at a pretty late point.
Sorry I came across as a scold. You’re right about the spoiler warning and it’s not like you gave away the ending, but I felt like ribbing you because
you revealed that the grail is an important plot element and at least implied that it is connected with Mary Magdalene.
I agree that many of the artistic and historical interpretations are far-fetched (hence my “Raiders” reference), but it can be fun to consider familiar things in a different light. And to be fair to Dan Brown, he acknowledges that the grail wasn’t always thought of as a cup.
The true identity of the grail is one of the central mysteries of the book, but the answer will not be much of a surprise if you’re at all familiar with works such as “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.”
I was thinking about picking the book up out of curiosity, but then I read the other book by the same author, Demons and angels, and it was incredibly lame and annoying. Has anyone read both? Is this one just as aggravating?
For what it’s worth, I enjoyed ‘The Da Vinci Code’ but didn’t at all like ‘Angels & Demons’ (not ‘Demons & Angels’…total nitpick!). In fact, I never even finished ‘Angels’…
OK, I’ve really got to get to work, but one final tidbit. I looked at the inside front jacket of “The Da Vinci Code” and saw that some of the letters are darker there. The complete hidden phrase reads “Is there no help for the widow’s son?”, which is not only a Masonic phrase but, at least according to some sources, the last thing spoken by Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. Since two of Brown’s novels have dealt with links between the Roman Catholicism and secret societies, I wonder if he’s planning to work Mormonism into the next. Still, since he’s fond of multiple meanings, I wouldn’t rule out the biblical dead man (not Lazarus) or the possibilities capybara suggested, Horus and Parzifal, although my guess would be that any grail reference would be a red herring.
Here’s one lifted straight from the book, but I don’t think it gives away any of the plot. http://www.danbrown.com/secrets/davinci_code/davinci2.html
Baby John the Baptist appears to be blessing the submissive baby Jesus, a reversal of their traditional roles, according to Brown. In the original version, Mary and the angel appear to be miming the decapitation of John. Brown doesn’t explain why, but at a stretch this could be a hint that the Church had acted to deprive John of his proper role in theology.
Disclaimer: I don’t agree with many of Brown’s statements about art, religion and history, but I find them intriguing to think about.