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Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of a male figure perfectly inscribed in a circle and square, known as the "Vitruvian Man," illustrates what he believed to be a divine connection between the human form and the universe. Beloved for its beauty and symbolic power, it is one of the most famous images in the world. However, new research suggests that the work, which dates to 1490, may be a copy of an earlier drawing by Leonardo's friend. Another illustration of a divinely proportioned man — the subject is Christ-like, but the setting is strikingly similar to Leonardo's — has been discovered...

A New York artist believes he's "cracked the code" of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" painting. Ron Piccirillo stated on his blog that the painting is an optical illusion with one painting hidden within another. He refers to a "secret that has been hiding for five hundred years" as he claims to have found a lion's head, an ape head and a buffalo head in the painting while turning it around. "I had first Googled this, but could not find anything on it," he stated. "How could something like this have gone unnoticed for five hundred years?" The key to...

The Last Supper is one of the most famous of Leonardo’s pictures. Commissioned by da Vinci’s patron, Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, it was painted on a wall inside the convent of Santa Maria della Grazie in Milan in the 1490s. The Last Supper had always been a popular subject for devotional painting but Leonardo’s interpretation lifted the image to a higher plane in terms of art.

For centuries, people have been speculating about who modeled for Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa." Was it Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine merchant? Was it Isabella of Aragon? Was it the artist himself, as some experts believe? Or was it, as new research suggests, none of the above? An Italian art historian, Silvano Vinceti, believes the model for the "Mona Lisa" was a man named Gian Giacomo Caprotti, better known as Salai, a male apprentice (and possible lover) of da Vinci...

Universite de Montreal researchers decode food served in legendary painting Montreal, March 30, 2010 – The Last Supper – relentlessly studied, scrutinized, satirized and one the world's most famous paintings – is still revealing secrets. Researchers Olivier Bauer, Nancy Labonté, Jonas Saint-Martin and Sébastien Fillion of the Université de Montréal Faculty of Theology have found new meaning to the food depicted by Leonardo Da Vinci's famous artwork. "We asked ourselves why Da Vinci chose those particular foods, because they don't correspond to what the Evangelists described," says Bauer. "Why bread, fish, salt, citrus and wine? Why is the saltshaker tipped...

A date for your diary: Leonardo da Vinci predicted that the world would end on November 1, 4006, according to a Vatican researcher. Sabrina Sforza Galitzia said the clues were to be found in da Vinci’s Last Supper mural. The central half-moon window, or lunette, above his painting of Christ with his disciples before the Crucifixion contains a “mathematical and astrological” puzzle which she has deciphered, she said. She claimed to have worked out that da Vinci foresaw the end of the world in a “universal flood” which would begin on March 21, 4006 and end on November 1 the...

... Galileo, both of whom, of course, are more famous—at least in popular culture—than the Polish genius. From a recent column: Copernicus, son of a Polish father and German mother, was a priest and the temporary administrator of the diocese of Frauenburg. As a Renaissance man, he put Leonardo da Vinci in the shade, although painting seems to be the one art that did not claim him as a master. After studies in the universities of Krakow (where Pope John Paul II studied and taught), Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, he became a prominent jurist and mathematician and also practiced medicine...

A portrait of a young woman thought to be created by a 19th century German artist and sold two years ago for about $19,000 is now being attributed by art experts to Leonardo da Vinci and valued at more than $150 million. The unsigned chalk, ink and pencil drawing, known as "La Bella Principessa," was matched to Leonardo via a technique more suited to a crime lab than an art studio — a fingerprint and palm print found on the 13 1/2-inch-by-10-inch work. Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said the print of an index or middle finger...

Art Market Fingerprint points to $19,000 portrait being revalued as £100m work by Leonardo da Vinci 12 October 2009   ATG correspondent SIMON HEWITT gains exclusive access to the evidence used to unveil what the world’s leading scholars say is the the first major Leonardo Da Vinci find for 100 years.   New scientific techniques have uncovered evidence that this picture is a previously unrecognised work by Leonardo da Vinci.  Is this 13 x 9in (33 x 24cm) portrait, in chalk, pen and ink on vellum, mounted on an oak board, a long-lost work by Leonardo da Vinci? That...

If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it. As usual, Leonardo anticipated both of them. First, concentrate on scientific gadgetry. After spotting what seemed to be a clue to Leonardo’s painting left by another 16th-century artist, Dr. Seracini led an international team of scientists in mapping every millimeter of the wall and surrounding room with lasers, radar, ultraviolet light and infrared cameras. Once they identified the likely hiding place, they developed devices to detect the painting by...

The real mystery surrounding Dan Brown's sequel to The Da Vinci Code doesn't involve Catholic cults or revisionist Christianity. It's whether the return of Robert Langdon can help publishers drag themselves up from one of the lower circles of economic hell. The Lost Symbol goes on sale Tuesday, six years after The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies in 51 languages, and booksellers and publishers are hoping its appearance will inspire Brown's fans to pick up a little something extra. Maybe the new Edward Kennedy memoir True Compass, which goes on sale Monday. ``We're hoping the book drives people...

The Great Leonardo Da Vinci designed many weapons, including giant crossbows, machine guns, siege towers, cluster bombs and even a precursor to the modern-day tank. 1. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Terminator Leonardo Da Vinci’s mechanical knight was not discovered until 1957, when Carlo Pedretti discovered it, hidden amongst Da Vinci’s countless designs. The mechanical knight, first sketched by DaVinci in 1495, was mentioned in 1974, in the Codex Madrid edited by Ladislao Reti, but there was no attempt to reconstruct it until 1996 when Mark Rosheim published an independent study of the robot, followed by a joint enterprise with the Florence...

DRAWINGS by Leonardo da Vinci on show at a Welsh coastal town were previously stored there in a wartime “secret cave of masterpieces”, researchers have discovered. A travelling exhibition of 10 of the Italian genius’s works is currently on display at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. But workers delving into the institution’s archives last night revealed how the images once arrived in the town on the eve of World War II, along with other priceless masterpieces. Medi Jones-Jackson, communications officer for the library, said: “It’s been discovered that the works were originally here 70 years ago – evacuated from...

The mystery is set in the Louvre and the clues are hidden behind a 16th-century masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. Remind you of anything? Lovers of Dan Brown novels will be salivating at the discovery of three previously unknown drawings on the back of one of Leonardo’s major works. A curator spotted the sketches on the back of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne when it was taken down in September for restoration.

It is the discovery of three almost invisible drawings on the back of Leonardo da Vinci's Virgin and Child With Saint Anne in the Louvre museum in Paris that has the French art world screaming "Sacre bleu!" Reminiscent of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, the mysterious sketches were found by experts looking into restoring the sixteenth-century masterpiece. They were detected when a curator noticed that some of the gray marks behind Virgin and Child With Saint Anne resembled a horse's head. An infrared photo confirmed his suspicion and revealed two other sketches: a human skull and the infant Jesus with...

Is Battlestar Galactica being sacreligious with this picture? I myself say no, but I realize than some people get offended at just about anything!Source

A Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition focusing on his fascination with machines opens in the Museum of Industry in the German city of Saxony. The exhibition which opened on Sunday includes more than 40 wooden models of his inventions, including Archimedes screws, lifting devices, pulleys and flywheels. The exhibition will be open until June 15. One of the advantages of this particular exhibition is that the visitors are permitted to touch many of the exhibits and try them out for themselves, DPA reported. Da Vinci was a superb painter as well as designer of buildings and machinery and produced studies on...

German academics believe they have solved the centuries-old mystery behind the identity of the "Mona Lisa" in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait. ADVERTISEMENT Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting. But art historians have often wondered whether the smiling woman may actually have been da Vinci's lover, his mother or the artist himself. Now experts at the Heidelberg University library say dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that...

Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, the largest collection of drawings and writings by the Renaissance master, is being destroyed by mould because of lack of restoration funds. The mould has stained and damaged many of the 1,200 sheets in the codex, kept at the Ambrosian Library in Milan and bound in 12 volumes. The damage was discovered by Carmen Bambach, an American scholar from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She said that there were “a large number of stains” and “swellings” in the paper of the codex. She raised the alarm by informing Monsignor Gianfranco Ravasi, then the head...

<p>A new storm is brewing in the world of Da Vinci theorists after a mysterious group claimed it has used mirrors to uncover hidden biblical images in some of the great master’s most famous works.</p> <p>The Mirror of the Sacred Scriptures and Paintings In recent years, art history scholars have unveiled Templar knights, Mary Magdalene, a child and a musical script hidden in the Italian’s paintings.</p>

ROME, Italy (AP) -- It's a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real. An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting. "It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus." Painted from 1494 to 1498 in Milan's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the "Last Supper" vividly depicts a key...

Music 'hidden' in Last Supper art detail of The Last Supper The painting's loaves of bread allegedly correspond to notes A computer technician has claimed to have cracked a real Da Vinci code, by finding musical notes encoded in the masterpiece The Last Supper. Leonardo Da Vinci left clues to a 40-second musical composition in his painting, Giovanni Maria Pala said. Each loaf of bread in the picture represents a note, he said, which combine to sound "like a requiem". Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Tuscany's Da Vinci museum, said the theory was "plausible". The 15th century painting depicts Jesus' last...

The hunt for the "Battle of Anghiari," ...which Leonardo began in 1505 to commemorate the 15th-century Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari, a medieval Tuscan town... unfinished when Leonardo left Florence in 1506... was given new impetus about 30 years ago, when Seracini noticed a cryptic message on a fresco in the hall by Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist famed for chronicling Renaissance artists' labors. "Cerca, trova" -- "seek and you shall find" -- said the words on a tiny green flag in the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley." ...A few years ago, using radar and X-ray scans,...

Da Vinci's Last Supper: New conspiracy theory By Matthew Moore Last Updated: 9:35am BST 30/07/2007 It is a conspiracy theory worthy of a Dan Brown novel. The composite version of the Last Supper, created by superimposing the original with its mirror image New claims that Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper contains a hidden image of a woman holding a child are provoking a storm of interest on the internet. The figure allegedly appears when the 15th Century mural painting is superimposed with its mirror image, and both are made partially transparent. The 'woman' leans across the group in Christ's...

An Italian IT expert claims to have found a secret image of the Virgin Mary and a Knight Templar inside Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper.Pesci Slavisa said the image can only be seen in a certain light and that he had to use his computer skills to reveal it.“I noticed a strange effect, like a shadow, when I was looking through a magazine with a reproduction of The Last Supper,� the 36-year-old explained.“So I scanned the painting and printed it onto a transparent sheet, which I then laid over the original image.“The result is a new painting with...

A Scottish church which featured in the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" has revealed another mystery hidden in secret code for almost 600 years.A father and son who became fascinated by symbols carved into the chapel's arches say they have deciphered a musical score encrypted in them.Thomas Mitchell, a 75-year-old musician and ex-Royal Air Force code breaker, and his composer and pianist son Stuart, described the piece as "frozen music.""The music has been frozen in time by symbolism," Mitchell said on his Web site (www.tjmitchell.com/stuart/rosslyn.html), which details the 27-year project to crack the chapel's code."It was only a matter...

An expert on the "Mona Lisa" says he has ascertained with certainty that the symbol of feminine mystique died on July 15, 1542, and was buried at the convent in central Florence where she spent her final days. Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in Florence that referred to "the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant'Orsola," the Italian press reported Friday. Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, she is thought to have been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with whom she had...

ROME - An expert on the “Mona Lisa” says he has ascertained with certainty that the symbol of feminine mystique died on July 15, 1542, and was buried at the convent in central Florence where she spent her final days. Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in Florence that referred to “the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant’Orsola,” the Italian press reported Friday. Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, she is thought to have been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with whom...

A real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalizing clues and sharp art sleuths, may soon be solved, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be hidden within a wall in a Florence palace. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given approval for renewed exploration in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of power for various Florence rulers, including the Medici family in the 16th century. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in a wall may have preserved Leonardo's unfinished painted mural of the "Battle of Anghiari" for...

The research was based on a first core of photographs of about 200 fingerprints -- most of them partial -- taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life... The artist often ate while working, and Capasso and other experts said his fingerprints could include traces of saliva, blood or the food he ate the night before. It is information that could help clear up questions about his origins... "The one we found in this finger tip applies to 60 percent of the Arabic population, which suggests the possibility that his mother was of Middle Eastern origin," Capasso...

An early copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, which has bright colours believed to reflect the original painting, will go on display in London for the first time since 1902. The original Mona Lisa painting hangs in the Louvre in Paris. (Canadian Press) The Dulwich Picture Gallery will exhibit a reproduction once owned by portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, who received it from the Duke of Leeds in 1790. ..... The reproduction is wider than the original, showing a pair of columns flanking the figure that are only hinted at in Leonardo's version. As well, the colours are much...

The Victoria and Albert Museum turned down an offer from Bill Gates to exhibit a rare Leonardo da Vinci notebook because of "draconian" security measures specified by advisors to the Microsoft founder. Organisers of the V&A's Leonardo da Vinci exhibition were keen to include a series of pages from the Codex Leicester, a collection of Da Vinci's notes and drawings. However, Gates's representatives insisted on a series of restrictions governing how, when, and under what conditions the pages could be shown.

The studio could lose as much as $30 million on the movie, dashing parent GE's hopes. GE was counting on "Miami Vice" to sizzle at the box office this summer. But fizzle is closer to the truth. At a cost of at least $235 million to make and market, the remake of the iconic 1980s TV cop show was the biggest bet of the year for the company's studio Universal Pictures. During an earnings call with financial analysts in July, GE's chief financial officer singled out the stylish crime drama as a coming bright spot for the third quarter. That...

Life-saving operations on soldiers in combat zones could become possible thanks to a portable robotic surgeon that allows doctors to perform surgery on the battlefield without endangering themselves.Surgical robots that can be operated remotely are already used in some civilian hospitals. These include a system called "da Vinci" made by US company Intuitive Surgical, and another system called ZEUS, made by US firm Computer Motion. However, these existing systems are large and cumbersome, taking up much of an operating room. Now Blake Hannaford and colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, US, have come up with a system small...

          > ALL TIME BOX OFFICE         WORLDWIDE GROSSES #1-100 - #101-200 - #201-300 - #301-302(in millions) Rank Title Studio Worldwide Domestic / % Overseas / % Year 21 The Da Vinci Code Sony $750.0 $217.3 29.0% $532.7 71.0% 2006 22 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe BV $744.8 $291.7 39.2% $453.1 60.8% 2005

A vandal or vandals spray-painted words from "The Da Vinci Code" on the front doors of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church on Main Street late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.A groundskeeper at the church discovered the graffiti around 11 a.m. Wednesday and was visibly disheartened.A funeral was scheduled to take place at the church in the afternoon.The message sprayed in black paint read, "So DARK the con of man." That same message is a clue in the plot of "The Da Vinci Code," the best-selling novel by Dan Brown that has been made into a movie.The grafitti also included...

I used to think The Koran was the best book to read in the airport, simply because carrying it guarantees you’ll never get searched by airport security. Later, I decided that The Book of Mormon was better because it guarantees the person sitting next to you will never start a conversation during the flight. Now, I’ve decided – once and for all, I think – that The Da Vinci Code has both of them topped. Toting Dan Brown’s book is far better than toting the aforementioned works of fiction because it helps to identify my least favorite segment of American...

Standing behind the stormy campaign around the Da Vinci Code are Masons whose aim is to marginalize the Christian Church Deacon Andrey Kurayev, professor at Moscow Theological Academy and well-known Orthodox theologian, sought to dispel some of the myths underlying and referred to in the Da Vinci Code novel, in an interview to Interfax-Religion. - The stormy campaign around the Da Vinci Code, unexpected but also intriguing for many, has unwittingly put in one’s head the thought about its possible instigators. Simply speaking, qui prodest – who benefits from it? - The Da Vinci Code is a typical conspiracy work...

                                  Weekend Gross        Percent change from previous week The DaVinci Code      $34,000,000            -55.9% Over the Hedge          $26,875,000            -30.1% I looked for this info in the MSM and didn't see it. I could have missed it but all I saw was "'DaVinci' continues strong overseas".

If you knew that someone was about to drive off a cliff, wouldn't you warn that person about the danger? Wouldn't that be the loving thing to do? When Jesus calls His disciples to be salt and light, he was calling for Christians to do two things: 1. Warn people about their sins. 2. Show people that the answer to their sin problem is to establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through faith and discipleship. The warning about sin is not to condemn people for their sins; that is something only God can do. The warning about sin is...

THE DA VINCI CODE - BLASPHEMY HITS THE BIG SCREEN By Don Feder Posted May 19, 2006 The Da Vinci Code -- which opened today -- might be subtitled "Religion for Morons" or "Gnosticism Meets The New Age." It's fantasy posing as reality. The Sony Pictures film is blasphemous, defames the Catholic Church, and promotes neo-pagan Goddess worship. I find it offensive, and I'm not even a Christian. Director Ron Howard (who specializes in visual candy) assures us that Opie's opus will be true to the novel - a pretentious, overwritten piece of trash that makes Bridget Jones's Diary look...

Pope Benedict XVI is one of the “most prepared” popes in the last two or three centuries, but he’s “not sexy,” says veteran author and journalist John Allen in an interview in a Spanish newspaper. “Culturally he (Benedict) is very prepared to be pope, perhaps the best so in the last two or three centuries. But from the journalistic point of view he’s not very ‘sexy’,” said Allen, according to the Spanish El Pais newspaper. “Without a doubt, John Paul II is the most ‘sexy’ of the modern popes. Whatever he said, it ended up on the front pages of...

All the protests and all the bad reviews could not prevent "The Da Vinci Code" from recording a $224 million worldwide opening, the second-biggest debut ever at the global box office, its distributor said on Sunday. The controversial adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel, the story of a Vatican cover-up involving Jesus Christ and his supposed offspring, sold about $77 million worth of tickets at movie theaters in the United States and Canada during its first three days, according to Columbia Pictures. Box-office watchers had predicted a North American opening of between $50 million and $80 million for the most...

_______~~~Book/Movie Review of The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown~~~_______         Book Review of:         THE         DAVINCI        CODE         XX*X*X**               XXXX  Novel by: DAN BROWN Reviewed by: G. W. Watts   NEW: Book/Movie Review of Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" ; http://gordonwatts.com/DaVinci.html ; http://hometown.aol.com/gww1210/myhomepage/DaVinci.html ; http://www.geocities.com/gordon_watts32313/DaVinci.html *_Book (and limited Movie) Review of The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown_* WELCOME, Visitor: Please Turn on your computer speakers & maximize 3-D Stereo Enhancement for best sound! The DaVinci Code is set to open in theatres nationwide Friday, 19 May 2006. (Film based on Dan Brown's book by the same name.) ** Register...

The free-lance author Amy Welborn remembers well: In the run-up to the release of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ two years ago, the "news media could not get enough of the Gospels," she points out in USA Today. "Of course, this mass Bible study had a twist and a purpose: to show how Gibson got it wrong." Remember how the news

Editor's note: Dr. Tom Snyder contributed to this column. Dr. Ted Baehr is founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE®: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment and founder and chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission. Dr. Tom Snyder is editor of MOVIEGUIDE®. © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com "The First Amendment provides for the separation of Church and State." "The Founding Fathers were all deists." "America is a racist country." "Cuba is a worker's paradise." "The Bible is contradictory." "Jesus Christ didn't die on the Cross." "The religious right in America wants to establish a totalitarian theocracy." "Modern homo sapiens are descended...

As the Da Vinci Code's approval ratings (15%) appear to be settling far beneath even President George Bush's immigration program, and left-wing conspiracy theories begin to sprout up that the whole controversy is just Karl Rove's evil plot to distract America from the Iraq War / Halliburton / The Washington Nationals' bullpen woes, I thought I'd see if it were possible that such a poorly reviewed movie could become a hit. So I checked the list of 324 movies which have made $100 million for any movies which seemed like they could have gotten such low ratings. These, then are...

War on Christianity has been declared. On which side of the battle line will you stand? The movie version of Dan Brown's book, THE DA VINCI CODE, is now in theaters. Although the movie significantly waters down the unrelenting, anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism and goddess worship of the novel, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ, the Bible, Christianity, and God. That, coupled with the book’s popularity and some Christians’ ignorance about their faith, leads us to believe that the movie, and the attention it draws, will increase...

THECLINTONCODEIf you thought The DaVinci Code was shocking, you ain't heard nothing yet.  Everything the media taught you about the Clinton's is wrong.  The Clinton Code reveals that Bill did not rape Juanita Broaddrick, did not sexually harass Katherine Willey, and did not have improper relations with Paula Jones, Jennifer Flowers or even Monica Lewinski.  These were all a big cover up for Bill's real passion.....12-year old boys.The Clinton Code takes you inside the secret society, the Sid Blums, a society dedicated to protecting the dark secrets of socialism and communism.  How the secret blood line of Marx, Lennin, and...

What the president's immigration speech and "The DaVinci Code" have in common. What was missing in the president's approach the other night was the expression, or suggestion, of context. The context was a crisis that had gone unanswered as it has built, the perceived detachment of the political elite from people on the ground, and a new distance between the president and his traditional supporters. The president would have done well to signal that he knew he was coming late to the party, as it were; that he'd come to rethink his previous stand, or lack of a stand, and...