International Art Treasures Web Magazine

June 2006  

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Da Vinci Code: The Movie

It's not often that IATWM reviews movies but when they are resplendent with art and antiquities as in the Hollywood rendition of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code then it finds its way onto our cyber pages.

The action begins at the Louvre and as the character Jacques Sauniere tries to avoid his murderer many masterpieces are on view during a mad and futile dash.

Much of the opening minutes with Tom Hank's Harvard Professor Robert Langdon and Jean Reno's French Police Inspector Bezu Fache are in front of masterpieces. Up close is a print (not the actual) Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The Madonna of the Rocks, Louvre version, is a key component of this opening sequence of events.

The action then moves to Westminster Abbey in London where the Tomb of Sir Isaac Newton is featured. Newton was buried at the Abbey on March 28, 1727. The tomb dates from 1731. The sculptor was Belgian native Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770) who created the grey and white marble tomb from architect William Kent's design. Among Rysback's other commissions were a bust of Alexander Pope, in 1730, that is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery of London and a noted version of Hercules created in 1747 that is found at Stourhead House and Garden's Pantheon in Wiltshire, England. William Kent is considered the 'father' of the English garden. To him it was a landscape that would add aesthetics to a property.

Much has been made of the pivotal claim in the book and the movie. What is art without controversy? The book is fictional. That it makes an incredible claim that challenges a key element of the Christian religion isn't a reason to boycott this movie or the book. From an art perspective the works included as the 'code' is cracked are visually splendid as is the architecture. A fictionalized version of a critical element of faith should not remove that element for any who truly believe. Dialog is good. Whether about da Vinci, architecture, symbolism or religious faith the more discussion the better.