1. Leonardo Da Vinci Did Not Paint Mary Magdalene
The title of The Da Vinci Code comes from the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper features not Jesus and 12 male disciples, but rather Jesus sitting next to a woman, Mary Magdalene. The two are positioned in such a way that their hips touch each other’s, but their bodies move apart, forming a “W” shape, signifying a vessel or the female womb. A larger “M” shape can be found in the painting, which stands for “Magdalene” or “matrimonious,” indicating that the two were married. Various other clues can supposedly be found in other paintings by the same painter, and Robert Langdon had to decipher these clues in his quest to find the Holy Grail and recover the sacred feminine that was supposedly revered by the early church.
The problem is that placed into the context of what we know about Leonardo Da Vinci, and his other paintings, the figure in question was, in fact, the disciple John, not Mary Magdalene. Da Vinci painted numerous pictures of effeminate young men who appear to have androgynous features. His final painting was of John the Baptist, and he seems to have feminine features which could lead to him being mistaken for a female. The same idea is apparent in The Mona Lisa, who is a female with androgynous features.
Additionally, Da Vinci was known to be a trickster who enjoyed using his work to mess with people’s minds. In fact, the notorious Voynich Manuscript, which a myriad of researchers have attempted to interpret but have found to be impossible, may have been written by him when he was a child, purely as a means of confusing people.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” Harvard University.
“The Real Da Vinci Code with Tony Robinson.” DocumentaryTube.
“Merovingian Dynasty.” Wikipedia.
“Opus Dei.” BBC. August 10, 2009.
“Da Vinci Code Ideas ‘Were Not Copied'”. The Guardian.
“Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene Is Fact, Not Fiction”. Huff Post.