The DaVinci Code (DVD, 2006, 2-Disc Special Edition, Full Frame Edition)

Leonardo Da Vinci the man, certainly fits our idea of a man of all seasons who lived by no code other than his own. Born illegitimately in Tuscany in 1452, Leonardo da Vinci took advantage of his considerable artistic and mechanical talents to break free of class constraints and achieve lasting recognition. While we think that the Renaissance Era was a peaceful time of painting flowers, and a free atmosphere in which creative genius flourished, it was this period of time that brought turbulent years which gave birth to the rebirth of civilization. As Bach and Mozart produced the finest music in the styles of their times, Da Vinci was a member of secret orders, most notably the Priory of Sion, a secret fraternal organization founded in 1099. Da Vinci himself was a intellectual paradox: he exerted a curiosity about practical and mechanical things, how they worked, and his artistic thoughts derived from the practical. He was practical, and apparently charismatic, and brilliant enough to produce works beyond anything seen before. According to legend he had such physical strength, could bend horseshoes with his hands, and it is well-known that he wrote his notebooks in script which was backwards. He never stopped experimenting, which unfortunately doomed some of his paintings to premature decay due to unstable primers. He sometime was unable to complete paintings because of attention problems; he would lose business opportunities, as with the Sistine chapel that finally Michaelangelo painted, whom he met late in life and resented. He also had two great strikes against him: he was illegitimate and also accused of sodomy. He overcame the stigma of the former, but the latter, Brown writes that Da Vinci was a “flamboyant homosexual” and fought “a perpetual state of sin against God” despite the public success of his life in historical terms while unproven, it haunted him forever. His love of nature, however, was tempered by witnessing murder in churches and public hangings. Although he refused to eat meat he drew pictures of corpses. He was an artist but also possessed the inquisitiveness of a scientist.
Leonardo Da Vinci was the man. A strange one at that.
Loretta Marie