It is well-documented that Da Vinci, who lived between 1452 and 1519, often wrote in mirror writing, either in an attempt to stop his rivals stealing his ideas or in a bid to hide his scientific theories, often deemed as subversive, from the powerful Roman Catholic Church.Oo. Booga-booga! As Zadok notes,
A Leonardo story wouldn't be complete without a reference to the powerful Church... so powerful that 'mirror writing' would befuddle her secret agents.Which brought to mind a chum whose father used to chide her saying,
If you don't finish your chores, I'll be all over you like a herd of turtles.Which used to strike terror into her, until one day in late high school it dawned on her to think about the image and she realized a herd of turtles was not that frightening. That's the way everyone writes about history, especially Church history, now. Everything we "know" is as unexamined as the herd of turtles. (And by the way, if you place the mirror just so, you can see the underside of a turtle in the Mona Lisa's sleeve. Just look! Was Da Vinci sending a coded message to future journalists?)
Zadok notices the authors, um, stuck their necks out for this comment:
The study’s authors wrote to the Vatican last year to explain their discovery, but received a lofty reply saying that while their findings would no doubt be the object of much discussion in the art history world, their ideas required "solid proof" and needed to be supported by a general consensus among art critics before they could be taken seriously.Oh, please. Read the text yourself and see that what they received is a very modest letter in pidgin English saying that the matter was not in the competence of a Pontifical Commission, but might be of interest to art critics.
Digressing now, but still on a matter slightly related to DVC. Remember the Princess Bride? Came out while I was in college, I think, and we just watched it. It features an evil albino monk who tortures the hero. Think that's where Dan Brown got it?
