Cultural depictions of Leonardo da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance artist and genius, has appeared in many fictional works, such as novels, television shows and movies, and various characters have been named after him. This article is about those fictional representations of or appearances by Leonardo in popular culture and in high culture.

Contents

[edit] Television

  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Requiem for Methuselah, Leonardo da Vinci is revealed to be one of many aliases to "Flint", an immortal man born in the year 3834 BC. Leonardo's abilities and knowledge are thus attributed to centuries of scientific and artistic study. Leonardo appears again in the Star Trek universe, in the series Star Trek: Voyager, where his workshop is created as a holographic simulation. Actor James Daly played Flint / Leonardo in Star Trek: The Original Series, while John Rhys-Davies portrayed Leonardo in Star Trek: Voyager. Also, in the S.C.E. (Starfleet Corps of Engineers) novels, the main starship of the series is called the U.S.S. Da Vinci (NCC-81623), a Sabre-class vessel, named for the artist.
  • The 1979 Doctor Who story City of Death features a theft of the Mona Lisa. The Doctor goes back in time to visit Leonardo's workshop and claims to be an old acquaintance of the artist. Leonardo also appears as a character in several Doctor Who novels.
  • The cartoon The Tick features Leonardo in Leonardo DaVinci and his Fightin' Genius Time Commandos! (Season 2, Episode 17, 1995).
  • The television show "Alias" features a character Milo Giacomo Rambaldi, a fictional character clearly based on Leonardo.
  • In the animated television series Dilbert episode Art has Leonardo as the secret ruler of the art world. He reveals that he discovered immortality centuries ago through the invention of the fountain of youth.
  • An episode of Histeria! focusing on the Renaissance featured a cartoon caricature of Leonardo as a host. Over the course of the episode, he is criticized by World's Oldest Woman for wearing a dress, and also parodies the 1960s Batman series as Renaissance Man, with Loud Kiddington as his sidekick.

[edit] Novels and short stories

  • The Second Mrs. Giaconda (1981) by E. L. Konigsburg is a story about why Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa.
  • Theodore Mathieson's short story Leonardo Da Vinci: Detective portrays him using his genius to solve a murder during his time in France.
  • The novel Pasquale's Angel by Paul McAuley, set in an alternate universe Florence, portrays Leonardo as "the Great Engineer", creating a premature industrial revolution (see clockpunk).
  • The novel The Memory Cathedral by Jack Dann is a fictional account of a "lost year" in the life of Leonardo. Dann has his genius protagonist actually create his flying machine.
  • The novel Pilgrim by Timothy Findley describes the encounters of an immortal named Pilgrim with Leonardo da Vinci among others, as told to Carl Jung.
  • Terry Pratchett's character Leonard of Quirm is a pastiche of Leonardo.
  • Three novels by Martin Woodhouse and Robert Ross feature the adventures of Leonardo da Vinci in the guise of a James Bond-type spy of the Italian Renaissance: The Medici Guns (1974); The Medici Emerald and The Medici Hawks.
  • The Secret Supper (2006) by Javier Sierra explores the symbology of Leonardo's Last Supper, and its threat to the Catholic Church, as he is painting the fresco in 15th century Milan.
  • Black Madonna (1996) by Carl Sargent and Marc Gascoigne, is set in the Shadowrun game universe and portrays Leondardo as still living in the 21st century, blackmailing corporations to finance his inventions.

[edit] The Da Vinci Code

UK cover of The Da Vinci Code
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UK cover of The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown's bestselling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code (which was adapted and released as a major motion picture in 2006) revolves around a conspiracy based on elements of Leonardo's Last Supper and other works. The novel claimed that from 1510-1519, Leonardo was the Grand Master of a secret society, the Priory of Sion. This society was actually a 20th century hoax, but The Da Vinci Code had gotten much of its information from the 1982 pseudohistory book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which in turn had based much of its own research on what turned out to be forged medieval documents created as part of the Priory of Sion fraud. The mix of fact and fiction in the documents made it difficult to immediately discount. For example, it was claimed that the Grand Master prior to Leonardo was Botticelli, who had indeed had an association with Leonardo, as they were both students at the Florence workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio.

The Priory of Sion story was eventually thoroughly debunked, and many of those involved with the fraud publicly recanted, but The Da Vinci Code still portrayed the story of the Priory as "fact," and expanded on the claims:

  • That there were additional secrets hidden in Leonardo's paintings, such as an "M" letter in the painting of The Last Supper, involving an image of Mary Magdalene to the left of Jesus.
  • That Leonardo's painting The Mona Lisa was actually a self-portrait
  • That there were differences in the two versions of the painting of the Virgin of the Rocks (which hang in the Louvre and London's National Gallery), saying that the baby to the left is said to be Jesus, and to the right John the Baptist, rather than the accepted view, which is the other way round.
  • That Leonardo invented a cryptex for carrying secret messages

The book also used a variation of Leonardo's backwards handwriting to hide a secret message on the American bookjacket.

[edit] Comics

[edit] Movies

[edit] Theatre

  • Peter Barnes's 1969 play Leonardo's Last Supper centres on Leonardo being "resurrected" in a filthy charnel house after being prematurely declared dead.
  • David Davalos's 2002 play Daedalus tells a fantasized story of Leonardo's time as a military engineer in the service of Cesare Borgia.

[edit] Computer and video games

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