The Real Leonardo Continued

Brown’s throwaway assertion that Leonardo was “a flamboyant homosexual” remains unsubstantiated, but serves to link his version of the artist’s story to contemporary controversies of a sort that simply did not exist in sixteenth-century Italy. As for Brown’s representation of the artist as a “worshipper of Nature’s divine order,” that leaves art historians scratching their heads. The fanciful image of Leonardo as something between a scientist and an animist cannot be inferred either from the artist’s life or his writings.

The simple fact is that Leonardo lived a Christian life, framed by his baptism in infancy and the last rites at his death in France. He lived at courts where Christian rite and worship was deeply rooted in daily life. At the end of his life Leonardo put aside his experiments and dedicated himself to a better understanding of the doctrines of the Catholic faith.

He worked for several religious orders, including the Dominicans for whom he produced the magnificent Last Supper. Dan Brown makes the astonishing claim that Leonardo had “hundreds of lucrative Vatican commissions.” In fact he had only one, which he never completed.

Brown’s spurious suppositions become a springboard from which he leaps to the conclusion that the painter nourished “contempt for the church.” This premise then becomes the basis of Brown’s further fanciful artistic interpretations.

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