Tuesday, July 11 @ 02:22:47 CEST
If you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, you should read The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra. Described by the author as an "investigative novel," Sierra places his book in the late 1400s Milan where Leonardo Da Vinci is painting his Last Supper fresco in the refectory at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The story is told by Father Agostino, an Inquisitor from Rome. He is an expert on cryptography and works in the Renaissance equivalent of the CIA for the Catholic Church. The church has been receiving encrypted messages about Da Vinci's heresy in his painting, "The Last Supper." Father Agostino journeys to Milan in an effort to decode the messages and view the painting.

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2322)

Tuesday, May 30 @ 20:36:43 CEST
On the periphery regarding the world of Renaissance art, Jesus and Mary Magdalene offspring, heretics and plaintiffs, and a certain celebrity author recently cleared, there lays a genuine, thrill-seeking detective of the occult who’s enjoying this media spectacle and reaping its benefits. He’s a relative newcomer to the global publishing scene, who at the ripe age of 34, has already published seven books in Spain on historical enigmas—from Napoleon’s famous night spent within Egypt’s Great Pyramid to the secrets behind the highly-advanced civilizations of the Golden Age.

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Sunday, May 21 @ 17:12:53 CEST
MORE than a decade ago, a British nun with an overbite and a girlish voice became a TV sensation. Sister Wendy Beckett made paintings accessible to a mass audience the way that Leonard Bernstein made classical music interesting for children. Her approach was simple. "People who go to the museum are not asked, luky them, to hold forth about these works," she told an interviewer. "My struggle has been to let them know there is something there to respond to and for them to respond to."

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Friday, May 05 @ 03:44:03 CEST
In an interview to Corriere Canadese/-Tandem, Sierra claimed that this work of the Italian genius born in Vinci in 1452 is nothing but "a trick played on the Dominicans of the Holy Inquisition of Milan." The young author, born in Teruel in 1971, wrote his novel drawing inspiration from the techniques used by Umberto Eco in his Name of the Rose (1980), which has been called a sort of labyrinthine historical/mystery novel.

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Tuesday, May 02 @ 19:30:18 CEST
What should we call a large group of conspiracy theorists? A British reviewer wryly suggests "a connivance." There are certainly enough writers in pursuit of Mary Magdalene's supposed French descendants to make up a large connivance. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 40 million hardcover copies in 44 languages, and conspiracy mavens will be hard-put to imagine it is coincidence that two related novels are appearing in the same season that finally sees the paperback publication of The Da Vinci Code and the premiere of a movie version. So the billion-dollar question here is whether or not these two candidates for the brotherhood of connivers will challenge Brown, who sits securely on a mile-high stack of bestsellers.

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2290)

Monday, April 24 @ 01:34:03 CEST
The first thing to be said about The Secret Supper is that it covers some of the same territory as The Da Vinci Code. The second thing to say is that it is a far, far better book. It is better written, has more engaging characters and a better plot, and the information is more exotic.

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2503)

Saturday, April 22 @ 16:38:47 CEST
Completed in 1497, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper is one of the most famous pictures in the history of Western art. The tableau of Christ and his 12 disciples has been endlesslessly reproduced in books and prints and postcards, as well as on tea towels, souvenir mugs, and T-shirts. But if you thought you knew anything about Leonardo's masterwork, think again.

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2857)

Monday, April 03 @ 00:23:44 CEST
"Every time you admire a painting, remember you are entering the most sublime of all arts. Never remain on the surface: enter the scene, move among its elements, uncover its unknown details, prowl its recesses -- and that way you'll grasp its true meaning."

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2246)

Sunday, April 02 @ 16:31:09 CEST
What is it about Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" that captivates the imagination? Is it his vivid depiction of the moment Jesus tells his followers one of them will betray him? The puzzling absence of the bread and chalice symbolizing his body and blood? Or the startlingly feminine appearance of the disciple seated at his right hand?

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2410)

Sunday, April 02 @ 03:09:11 CEST
The "Da Vinci" wannabes just keep coming. Europe's highest-profile entry in the sweepstakes is The Secret Supper (Atria; 329 pages; $25.95) by Javier Sierra, translated from the original Spanish by Alberto Manguel.

(Read More...   Lecturas: 2440)