Leonardo 2007
There was an article out today about a “new conspiracy theory” regarding Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper. I’m not going to get into it itself - read about it here http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070801/DaVinci_supper_070801/20070801?hub=TopStories.
What I am more interested in is the reaction to it. On the CTV address I gave there are comments from readers below, ranging from “Who cares? Maybe a dozen people over the entire planet who obviously have nothing better to do than stare at a old painting by some dead guy” to “Who cares!!!!!!!!
Last time I checked Da Vinci’s Dead. Nothing of interest can come of this. READ THE BIBLE” or “and imaginative ideas about Jesus, but they don’t take any interest in the historical account of his life recorded in the New Testament. Why is everyone so ready to believe wild and baseless speculation but so unwilling to wrestle with the well documented truth? The New Testament documents are among the most historically accurate ancient documents anywhere. Hundreds have tried to disprove them and have instead come to believe.”
As a student of history I could not help but write back to some of these baseless, ignorant, and just plain stupid responses. The first I will deal with is the comment referring to the “dozen people over the entire planet”. My guess is the bloke who wrote this is either not in university, or is in no way whatsoever involved in Arts or Humanities. Art History is in fact a very active field, and has been since the 16th century; art is a physical relic of cultural history, a documentation of faith, aesthetic tastes, and ideals of an individual or society. Art and art history is not just a field secluded to the university campus or museum, but is in fact a very public attraction. Take for instance National Lampoon’s parody of the Mona Lisa http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.studiolo.org/Mona/images/MonaGorilla2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.studiolo.org/Mona/MONA24.htm&h=300&w=216&sz=15&hl=en&start=0&um=1&tbnid=h_kYny4tWgroQM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=84&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmona%2Bgorilla%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN
By making a parody of the Mona Lisa, or anything for that matter, we are actively engaging with painting; we don’t need to be a scholar or an academic to appreciate such parodies.
My second point of concern is the claims that “The New Testament documents are among the most historically accurate ancient documents anywhere.” Its amazing how right somebody can seem if they speak as if they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, the Bible is not an historical document; it is a documentation of spiritual exploits of Jesus, yes, but that does not make it historical, especially in our sense of the term. For instance, the Gospels tell different and conflicting stories of Jesus; very very little is told of Jesus’s childhood, except as it relates to his ministry. So we cannot go saying that the New Testament is an historical document (and there are certainly many more ancient documents more trustworthy in terms of historical accuracy). The Gospels were written, it is generally agreed, at least a generation after the crucifixion, and the Book of John even later. Today, we can write a biography of someone who lived a hundred years or more before us with a great deal of accuracy because of historical documents; but Jesus left behind no writings, and there was no such thing as historical documentation of the same capacity of today. This is not to question the validity of the Bible, or to call into question to spiritual truth that is ascribed to the Bible. But one must understand what an accurate historical document is before ascribing the term to people’s recounting of their spiritual encounter with Jesus.
But, the funny thing to me is that nobody stated that Leonardo was questioning the story or claiming it to be false; he was a trickster, and loved to prank his patrons. Just research the two versions of the Madonna of the Rocks. The Church that he did his commission for was so scandalized by his first version that they demanded he do another, less heretical one before receiving full payment. In the field of history - art history included - the question of what is true is not always as important as what somebody thought was true.
- JGM
