MILAN — For a moment, I think of interjecting, “I’ve never read a word of Dan Brown,” but that might sound a bit sniffish.
I am at the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and a smart young scholar is explaining a detail of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” — the youthful or feminine appearance of Saint John, the apostle immediately to Jesus’ right. The interpretation in Brown’s extraordinarily successful thriller “The Da Vinci Code” — that the image is Mary Magdalene — isn’t supported by evidence, the scholar says. And she’s right: There was a long-standing tradition in Western art of representing Jesus’ beloved John in androgynous style, and Leonardo was particularly fond of painting and drawing effeminate-looking young men.
