Perhaps no one disputes the fact that one of the most outstanding personality of the past millennium was the artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci. He was born on April 15, 1452 in the village of Anchiano near Vinci, near Florence. His father was a 25-year-old notary, Piero da Vinci, and his mother was a simple peasant woman, Caterina. The prefix da Vinci means he comes from Vinci.

From the beginning, Leonardo lived with his mother, but then his father took him away, since his marriage with a noble girl turned out to be childless. Leonardo's abilities showed up quite early. As a child, he was well versed in arithmetic, played the lyre, but most of all he liked drawing and modeling. The father wanted his son to continue the work of his father and grandfather and become a notary. But Leonardo was indifferent to jurisprudence. One day, my father took the drawings to Leonardo, his friend and artist Verrocchio. He was delighted with his drawings and said that his son must definitely do painting.

In 1466 Leonardo was accepted as an apprentice in Verrocchio's workshop. I must say that this workshop was very famous and many famous masters of painting, such as Botticelli, Perugino, visited it. He had someone to learn the art of painting from. In 1473, when he was 20 years old, he received the title of master in the guild of St. Luke. About the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, says at least the fact that another genius of the Renaissance, Michelangelo could not stand it when Leonardo was mentioned in his presence, and he always called him an upstart. As they say, geniuses have their own quirks, they do not like when someone can be better than him.

As an artist, he painted several paintings, but, perhaps, two of his works entered the treasury of mankind. This is a painting of La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) and a painting on the wall of the Last Supper. La Gioconda still excites the minds of mankind, especially her smile, and indeed the whole composition, probably not about one picture, has not been written as much as about Mona Lisa. We can say that this is most likely the most expensive painting in the world, though it is impossible not to buy, not to sell it, it is priceless and too famous all over the world. The painting of the Last Supper, which depicts Jesus and his apostles, is an unsurpassed work of art, which is stunning in its depth and conceals many mysteries that the genius left us as a legacy. Many pictures have been written on the theme of the Last Supper, but none of them can compare with the painting by Leonardo da Vinci, this is, as they say in modern language, number one and hardly anyone will be able to surpass the master of the Renaissance.

Leonardo has never been married in his life. He was left-handed. Among the works of Leonardo there are also mysterious predictions. Which scientists are still solving. Here, for example: "An ominous feathered race will fly through the air; they will attack people and animals and feed on them with a great cry. They will fill their belly with scarlet blood" - as experts believe, this prediction is similar to the creation of military aircraft and helicopters or such: "People will talk to each other from the most distant countries and answer each other" - this is, of course, the telephone, and modern means of communication, such as telegraph and radio communication. Quite a lot of such prophetic mysteries were left.

Leonardo da Vinci was also considered a magician and magician, as he was well versed in physics and chemistry. He could make red from white wine, put his saliva on the end of the pen, and the pen wrote on paper, as if it were ink, from a boiling liquid he caused a multi-colored fire. His contemporaries seriously considered him a "black magician."

Leonardo was well versed in mechanics, so his drawings are known, where the design of a tank is guessed, there are also drawings of a parachute, he invented a bicycle, a glider. Submitted the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating armored ships (battleships). He described the ideas of a machine gun, a smoke screen, the use of poisonous gases, during the conduct of hostilities. The list of his ideas and inventions is too long to list them all. It can be said without a doubt that he was able to look into the future development of mankind as a whole and, moreover, several centuries ahead. The breadth of his thoughts is simply amazing, one must take into account the fact that it was the Middle Ages, where people were still burned, and any free thinking was simply dangerous to life.

He died at the age of 67, at the castle of Clu near Amboise, on May 2, 1519. In the castle of Amboise, he was buried. The following inscription was carved on the tombstone of the genius and the prophet: "Within the walls of this monastery lie the remains of Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest artist, engineer and architect of the French kingdom." There is nothing more to add. The name of Leonardo da Vinci went down in the history of mankind, like the Egyptian pyramids, mysterious and for many centuries.

CHAPTER ONE. THE SECRET CODE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI

There is one of the most famous - immortal - works of art in the world. The Last Supper fresco by Leonardo da Vinci is the only surviving mural in the refectory of the Santa Maria del Grazia monastery. It is executed on a wall that remained standing after the entire building was turned into a pile of rubbish as a result of the Allied bombing during the Second World War. Although other wonderful artists such as Nicolas Poussin and even such an idiosyncratic author as Salvador Dali presented their versions of this biblical scene to the world, it is Leonardo's work that, for some reason, strikes the imagination more than any other canvas. Variations on this topic can be seen everywhere, and they cover the entire spectrum of attitudes to the topic, from admiration to ridicule.

Sometimes the image looks so familiar that it is practically not considered in detail, although it is open to the eyes of any viewer and requires more careful consideration: its true deep meaning remains a closed book, and the viewer glances only over its cover.

It was this work of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) - the suffering genius of Renaissance Italy - that showed us the way that led to discoveries so exciting in their consequences that at first they seemed incredible. It is impossible to understand why entire generations of scientists did not notice what was available to our astonished gaze, why such explosive information has patiently waited for writers like us all this time, remained outside the mainstream of historical or religious research and was not discovered.

To be consistent, we must go back to The Last Supper and look at it with a fresh, unbiased eye. Now is not the time to view her in the light of familiar notions of history and art. Now the moment has come when the gaze of a person who is completely unfamiliar with this so famous scene will be more appropriate - let the veil of bias fall from our eyes, let us look at the picture in a new way.

The central figure, of course, is Jesus, whom Leonardo calls the Savior in his writings for this work. He pensively looks down and slightly to his left, his hands are stretched out on the table in front of him, as if offering the viewer the gifts of the Last Supper. Since it was then, according to the New Testament, that Jesus introduced the sacrament of the Sacrament, offering his disciples bread and wine as his “flesh” and “blood,” the viewer has the right to expect that there should be a bowl or goblet of wine on the table in front of him for the gesture to look justified ... Ultimately, for Christians, this supper immediately precedes the Passion of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he fervently prays "let this cup pass from me ..." - another association with the image of wine - blood, - and holy blood was shed before the Crucifixion to atone for sins of all mankind. Nevertheless, there is no wine before Jesus (and even a symbolic amount of it on the whole table). Could these outstretched arms mean what is called an empty gesture in the lexicon of artists?

Given the absence of wine, it is perhaps no coincidence that very few of the breads on the table are "refracted". Since Jesus himself associated with his flesh the bread that should be broken in the highest sacrament, is not a subtle hint sent to us about the true nature of Jesus' suffering?

However, all this is only the tip of the iceberg of heresy reflected in this picture. According to the Gospel, the Apostle John the Theologian was physically so close to Jesus during this Supper that he nestled “to his chest”. However, with Leonardo, this young man occupies a completely different position than the “stage instructions” of the Gospel require, but, on the contrary, exaggeratedly deviated from the Savior, bowing his head to the right. An unbiased viewer can be forgiven if he notices only these curious features in relation to a single image - the image of the apostle John. But, although the artist, due to his own predilections, of course, was inclined towards the ideal of male beauty of a somewhat feminine type, there can be no other interpretations: at the moment we are looking at a woman.Everything about him is amazingly feminine. No matter how old and faded the image may be due to the age of the fresco, one cannot but pay attention to the tiny, graceful hands, delicate facial features, clearly a woman's chest and a gold necklace. This is a woman, specifically a woman, which is marked by the dress that makes her stand out. The clothes on her are a mirror image of the Savior's clothes: if he is wearing a blue tunic and a red cloak, then she is wearing a red tunic and a blue cloak. None of those seated at the table has a robe that is a mirror image of Jesus' robe. And there are no other women at the table.

Central to the composition is the huge broadenedthe letter "M", which is formed by the figures of Jesus and this woman, taken together. They seem to be literally connected at the thighs, but they suffer from the fact that they diverge or even grow from one point in different directions. As far as we know, none of the academicians has ever referred to this image other than "St. John", they did not notice the compositional form in the form of the letter "M". Leonardo, as we have established in our studies, was an excellent psychologist who laughed when he presented his patrons, who commissioned him with the traditional biblical image, highly unorthodox images, knowing that people would calmly and calmly look at the most monstrous heresy, since usually they only see what they want to see. If you have been called to write a Christian scene and you have presented the public with something that at first glance is similar and meets their wishes, people will never look for ambiguous symbolism.

At the same time, Leonardo had to hope that there may be others who share his unusual interpretation of the New Testament, who recognize the secret symbolism in the picture. Or someone someday, some objective observer, will one day understand the image of a mysterious woman associated with the letter "M" and ask questions that are obvious from this. Who was this “M” and why is she so important? Why did Leonardo risk his reputation - even his life in the days when heretics were burning everywhere - to include it in the Christian's foundational scene? Whoever she is, her fate cannot but be alarming, as the outstretched hand cuts her gracefully arched neck. The threat contained in this gesture cannot be doubted.

The index finger of the other hand, raised directly in front of the face of the Savior, threatens himself with obvious passion. But both Jesus and "M" look like people who do not notice the threat, each of them is completely immersed in the world of his thoughts, each in his own manner is serene and calm. But all together it looks as if the secret symbols were used not only to warn Jesus and the one sitting next to woman(?), but also inform (or perhaps remind) the observer about some information that would be dangerous to publish in another way. Didn't Leonardo use his creation to publicize some special beliefs, which would be simply insane to proclaim them in the usual way? And could these beliefs be a message addressed to a much wider circle, and not just his neighbors? Maybe they were intended for us, for the people of our time?

Let's return to the consideration of this amazing creation. In the fresco on the right, from the point of view of the observer, a tall, bearded man doubled over as he spoke to a student at the edge of the table. At the same time, he almost completely turned his back to the Savior. The model for the depiction of this disciple - Saint Thaddeus or Saint Jude - was Leonardo himself. Note that the depictions of Renaissance artists are usually either random or were made when the artist was a beautiful model. In this case, we are dealing with an example of using an image by an adherent double entendre(double meaning). (He was preoccupied with finding the right model for each of the apostles, as can be judged by his rebellious proposal, made by the most angry prior of the monastery of St. Mary, to serve as a model for Judas.) So why did Leonardo portray himself so obviously turning his back on Jesus?

Moreover. An unusual hand aims a dagger at the belly of a student sitting just one person away from the "M". This hand cannot belong to anyone sitting at the table, since such a bend is physically impossible for people who are next to the image of the hand to hold the dagger in this position. However, what is really striking is not the very fact of the existence of a hand that does not belong to the body, but the absence in the writings about Leonardo that we have read, mention of this: although a couple of works mention this hand, the authors find nothing unusual in it. As in the case of the apostle John, who looks like a woman, nothing could be more obvious - or weirder - you just need to pay attention to this circumstance. But this inaccuracy most often escapes the attention of the observer simply because this fact is extraordinary and outrageous.

We often hear that Leonardo was a devout Christian, whose religious paintings reflect the depth of his faith. As we can see, at least one of the paintings contains images that are very dubious from the point of view of an orthodox Christian. Our further research, as we will show, has established that nothing can be as far from the truth as the idea that Leonardo was a true believer - that is, believers according to the canons of the generally accepted or at least acceptable form of Christianity. Already by the curious anomalous features of one of his creations, we can see that he was trying to tell us about another layer meaningsin a familiar biblical scene, about a different world of faith hidden in the conventional imagery of the mural in Milan.

Whatever the meaning of these heretical errors - and the significance of this fact cannot be exaggerated - they were absolutely incompatible with the orthodox dogmas of Christianity. In itself, this is unlikely to be news for many modern materialists / rationalists, since for them Leonardo was the first real scientist, a person who did not have time for any superstitions, a person who was the antithesis of all mysticism and occultism. But they too could not understand what appeared before their eyes. To depict the Last Supper without wine is tantamount to depicting a coronation scene without a crown: it turns out either nonsense, or the picture is filled with a different content, and to such an extent that it represents the author as an absolute heretic - a person who has faith, but a faith that contradicts the tenets of Christianity. Maybe not just another, but in a state of struggle with the dogmas of Christianity. And in other works of Leonardo, we have discovered his own particular heretical attachments, expressed in carefully crafted relevant scenes, which he would hardly have written that way, being just an atheist making his living. There are too many of these deviations and symbols to be interpreted as a mockery of a skeptic forced to work on order, nor can they be called simply antics, like, for example, the image of St. Peter with a red nose. What we see in the Last Supper and other works is the secret code of Leonardo da Vinci, which we believe has a striking connection to our modern world.

One can argue what Leonardo believed or did not believe, but his actions were not just a whim of a man, undoubtedly extraordinary, whose whole life was full of paradoxes. He was withdrawn, but at the same time the soul and life of society; he despised fortune-tellers, but his papers indicate large sums paid to astrologers; he was considered a vegetarian and dearly loved animals, but his tenderness rarely extended to humanity; he zealously dissected corpses and watched executions with the eyes of an anatomist, was a deep thinker and master of riddles, tricks and hoaxes.

With such a contradictory inner world, it is likely that the religious and philosophical views of Leonardo were unusual, even strange. For this reason alone, it is tempting to ignore him. heretical beliefsas something that does not matter for our modernity. It is generally accepted that Leonardo was an extremely gifted person, but the modern tendency to evaluate everything in terms of the "era" leads to a significant underestimation of his achievements. After all, in his prime, even typography was a novelty. What can one lone inventor, who lived in such primitive times, offer the world, which is bathed in the ocean of information through the global network, to the world, in a matter of seconds via telephone and fax, exchanging information with continents, in its times not yet discovered?

There are two answers to this question. First: Leonardo was not, let's use a paradox, an ordinary genius. Most educated people know that he designed a flying machine and a primitive tank, but at the same time some of his inventions were so alien to the time in which he lived that people with an eccentric mindset may imagine that he was given to foresee the future. His bicycle design, for example, did not become known until the late sixties of the twentieth century. Unlike the painful trial and error of the Victorian bicycle, the road eater Leonardo da Vinci has already in the first edition two wheels and a chain drive.But it is not the design of the mechanism that is even more striking, but the question of the reasons that prompted the invention of the wheel. Man has always wanted to fly like a bird, but the dream of balancing on two wheels and pressing the pedals, taking into account the deplorable state of the roads, already gives off mysticism. (Recall, by the way, that, unlike the dream of flying, it does not appear in any classical plot.) Among many other statements about the future, Leonardo also predicted the appearance of the telephone.

Even if Leonardo was even a greater genius than the historical books say, the question still remains unanswered: what possible knowledge he could have if what he proposed made sense or became widespread only five centuries after his time. One can, of course, put forward the argument that the teaching of the preacher of the first century, it would seem, should have even less relevance to our time, but the fact remains: some ideas are universal and eternal, the truth, found or formulated, after centuries does not cease to be true.

But it was not his philosophy, explicit or latent, and not his art that attracted us to Leonardo at first. We have embarked on an extensive study of everything related to Leonardo, because of his most paradoxical creation, whose fame is incomprehensibly great, but there is practically no knowledge. As detailed in our last book, we found that he was the master who fabricatedThe Shroud of Turin, a relic on which the face of Christ was miraculously preserved at the time of his death. In 1988, the radioisotope method proved to everyone, except for a handful of fanatical believers, that this item was an artifact from the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance. For us, the Shroud has remained a truly remarkable work of art. Burning interest was aroused by the question, who is this hoaxer, since only a genius could create this amazing relic.

Everyone - both those who believe in the authenticity of the Shroud and those who disagree with it - admit that it has all the features inherent in photography. The relic is characterized by a curious "negative effect", which means that the image to the naked eye looks like a foggy burn of the material, but it is seen quite clearly in all details on the photographic negative. Since such features cannot be the result of any known painting technique or other method of painting, adherents of the authenticity of the relic (those who believe that this is indeed the Shroud of Jesus) consider them to be proof of the miraculous nature of the image. However, we have established that the Turin Shroud exhibits properties inherent in photography, because it is a photographic print.

No matter how incredible this fact may seem at first glance, the Shroud of Turin is a photograph. The authors of this book, along with Keith Prince, have recreated what they thought was the original technology. The authors of this book were the first to reproduce the inexplicable features of the Turin Shroud. We got a camera obscura (a camera with a hole without lenses), a cloth treated with chemicals available in the fifteenth century, and we got some bright lighting. However, the object of our experiment was a plaster bust of a girl, which, unfortunately, is light-years away from the first model in status, despite the fact that the face on the shroud is not the face of Jesus, as has been repeatedly proclaimed, but the face of the hoaxer himself. In short, The Shroud of Turin, among other things, is a five hundred year old photograph of none other than Leonardo da Vinci himself.Despite some curious claims to the contrary, such work could not have been done by a godly Christian. The image on the Shroud of Turin, when viewed on a photographic negative, clearly represents the bloody, broken body of Jesus.

His blood, it should be remembered, is not ordinary blood, but for Christians it is divine, holy blood, through which the world has found redemption. According to our concepts, falsifying blood and being a true believer are incompatible concepts, besides, a person who has at least a bit of respect for the person of Jesus cannot pass off his own face as his face. Leonardo did both, skillfully and, we suspect, not without some secret pleasure. Of course, he knew, could not help but know that many pilgrims would pray to the image of Jesus on the Shroud - since no one realizes that this is an image of the Florentine artist himself - during the artist's lifetime. As far as we know, he really was in the shadows, watching how people pray in front of the relic - and this is fully consistent with what we know about his character. But did he guess what a myriad of people would sign the sign of the cross in front of his image for centuries? Could he have imagined that sometime in the future, people would be converted to Catholic dogma just because they saw this beautiful, tortured face? Could he have foreseen that in the world of Western culture, the concept of what Jesus looked like would be influenced by the image on the Turin Shroud? Did he realize that someday millions of people from all over the world would worship the Lord in the form of a 15th century homosexual heretic, that a person Will Leonardo da Vinci literally become a picture of Jesus Christ?The Shroud became what we believe to be the most cynical - and successful - hoax ever realized in human history.

But even though millions of people have been fooled, it is more than a hymn to the art of gaudy pranking. We believe that Leonardo took the opportunity to create the most revered Christian relic as a means of achieving two goals: to convey to posterity the technology he invented and encoded heretical beliefs. It was extremely dangerous - and events confirm this - to make public the technology of primitive photography in that age of superstition and religious fanaticism. But, no doubt, Leonardo was amused that his image would be watched over by the very priests whom he so despised. Of course, this irony of the situation could be purely accidental, a simple whim of fate in the plot is already quite entertaining, but for us this looks like another proof of Leonardo's passion for complete control over the situation, and extending far beyond his own life.

In addition to the fact that the Turin Shroud is a falsification and creation of a genius, it also contains certain symbols characteristic of Leonardo's predilections, which are found in other recognized works of his. For example, at the base of the neck of the person depicted on the Shroud, there is a clear dividing line. In the image fully converted to a "contour map" using sophisticated computer technology, we see that this line marks the bottom of the head in full face, then a dark field below it until the upper chest appears. It seems to us that there were two reasons. One of them is purely practical, since the display is composite - the body of a really crucified person, and the face of Leonardo himself, so the line could turn out to be a necessary element indicating the place of the "connection" of the two parts. However, the forger was not a simple artisan and could easily get rid of the treacherous dividing line. But did Leonardo really want to get rid of her? Maybe he left it for the viewer on purpose, according to the principle "who has eyes, so he sees"?

What possible heretical message could the Turin Shroud contain, even in encoded form? Is there a limit to the number of characters that can be encoded in an image of a naked crucified person - an image that has been scrupulously analyzed by many of the best scientists with all the equipment at their disposal? We'll come back to this question later, but for now let us hint that the answer to these questions can be found by looking with a fresh, unbiased look at the two main features of the display. The first feature: an abundance of blood, which gives the impression of flowing through the hands of Jesus, which may seem to contradict the feature of the Last Supper, namely, the symbol expressed through the absence of wine on the table. In fact, one thing only confirms the other. The second feature: a pronounced dividing line between the head and the body, as if Leonardo draws our attention to the beheading ... As far as we know, Jesus was not decapitated, but the display is composite, which means that we are invited to look at the display as two separate images , which nevertheless are somehow closely related. But even if this is so, then why is someone beheaded placed over the one who was crucified?

As you will see, this allusion to the severed head depicted on the Turin Shroud is a reinforcement of the symbols found in many of Leonardo's other works. We have already noted that the young a womanThe “M” in the fresco “The Last Supper” is clearly threatened by a hand, as if cutting its graceful neck, as in the face of Jesus himself threateningly raised up a finger: a clear warning, or perhaps a reminder, or both. In the works of Leonardo, the raised index finger is always, in each case, directly associated with John the Baptist.

This holy prophet, the forerunner of Jesus, who announced to the world “behold the lamb of God,” whose sandals he is not worthy to untie, was of great importance for Leonardo, as can be judged by his numerous images in all the artist's surviving works. This addiction in itself is a curious fact for a man who believed modern rationalists who claim that Leonardo did not have enough time for religion. A person for whom all the characters and traditions of Christianity were nothing would hardly devote so much time and energy to one single saint to the extent that he was concerned with John the Baptist. Again and again, John dominates Leonardo's life, both on a conscious level in his work, and on a subconscious level, which is expressed through the numerous coincidences surrounding him.

The impression is that the Baptist follows him everywhere. For example, his beloved Florence is considered under the patronage of this saint, as is the Cathedral in Turin, where the Holy Shroud, which he falsified, is located. His last painting, which together with the Mona Lisa was in his room in the last hours before his death, was an image of John the Baptist. His only surviving sculpture (made in collaboration with Giovanni Francesco Rustici, a famous occultist) is also the Baptist. She now stands above the entrance to the baptistery in Florence, high above the heads of the crowds of tourists, representing, unfortunately, a convenient perch for pigeons indifferent to the shrines. The raised index finger - what we call the "gesture of John" - appears in Raphael's painting School in Athens (1509). The venerable Plato repeats this gesture, but in circumstances that are not associated with any mysterious allusions, as the reader might imagine. In fact, the model for Plato was none other than Leonardo himself, and this gesture, obviously, was not only characteristic of him, but also had a deep meaning (as, presumably, for Raphael and other people from this circle).

If you think we are placing too much emphasis on what we have called "John's gesture," then take a look at other examples in Leonardo's work. The gesture appears in several of his paintings and, as we have already said, always means the same thing. In his unfinished painting The Adoration of the Magi (which was begun in 1481) an anonymous witness repeats this gesture near the hill on which carobtree. Many hardly even notice this figure, since their attention is riveted on the main thing, in their opinion, in the picture - the worship of the wise men or magi to the Holy Family. The beautiful, dreamy Madonna with the baby Jesus on her knees is depicted as if in the shadows. The Magi are on their knees, offering gifts to the child, and in the background is a crowd of people who have come to bow to the mother and the baby. But, as in the case of The Last Supper, this work is only at first glance Christian, and it deserves close study.

The worshipers in the foreground can hardly be called a model of health and beauty. The Magi are exhausted to such an extent that they almost look like corpses. Outstretched hands do not give the impression of a gesture of admiration, rather, they look like shadows reaching out to a mother and child in a nightmare. The Magi offer their gifts, but there are only two of the canonical three. Frankincense and myrrh are bestowed, but not gold. In Leonardo's time, the gift of gold symbolized not only prosperity, but also kinship - here Jesus is denied it. If you look into the background, behind the Beautiful Virgin and the Magi, you can see the second crowd of worshipers. They look healthier and stronger, but if you follow where their gazes are directed, it becomes obvious that they are not looking at the Madonna and the baby, but at the roots of the carob tree, near which one of them raised his hand in "John's gesture." And the carob tree is traditionally associated - with whom do you think - with John the Baptist ... The young man in the lower right corner of the picture deliberately turned away from the Holy Family. It is generally accepted that this is Leonardo da Vinci himself. The rather weak traditional argument that he turned away, considering himself unworthy of the honor of contemplating the Holy Family, does not hold water, since it was widely known that Leonardo did not particularly favor the church. In addition, in the image of the Apostle Thaddeus, he completely turned away from the Savior, thereby emphasizing the negative emotions that are associated with the central figures of Christian history. In addition, since Leonardo was unlikely to be the embodiment of piety or humility, this reaction is unlikely to be the result of an inferiority complex or servility.

Let us turn to the wonderful, memorable painting "Madonna and Child with St. Anne" (1501), which is the pearl of the London National Gallery. Here again we find elements that should - although this rarely happen - disturb the observer with their underlying meaning. The picture shows the Madonna and Child, Saint Anna (her mother) and John the Baptist. Baby Jesus, obviously, blesses his “cousin” John, who instinctively looks up, while Saint Anna from close distance gazes intently into the detached face of her daughter and makes “John's gesture” with a surprisingly large and masculine hand. However, this upturned index finger is positioned directly above Jesus' tiny blessing hand, as if shading it both literally and metaphorically. And although the pose of the Madonna seems very uncomfortable - she sits almost sideways - in fact, the pose of the baby Jesus looks the strangest.

Madonna holds him as if she would now push him forward so that he would give a blessing, as if she brought him into a painting in order to do this, but she hardly holds him in her lap. Meanwhile, John rests serenely on Saint Anne's lap, as if the honor given to him does not bother him. Could it be that Madonna's own mother would remind her of some secret associated with John? As stated in the accompanying explanation of the National Gallery, some experts, perplexed by the youth of Saint Anne and the anomalous presence of John the Baptist, have suggested that the painting actually depicts the Madonna and her cousin Elizabeth - mother of John.Such an interpretation seems plausible, and if accepted, the argument becomes even stronger. The same obvious reversal of the roles of Jesus and John the Baptist can be seen in one of the two versions of Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks. Art historians have not given a satisfactory explanation of why the painting was executed in two versions, one of which is in the National Gallery in London, and the second - for us the most interesting - in the Louvre.

The original order was made by the Order of the Immaculate Conception, and the painting was to be the centerpiece of a triptych in the altar of their chapel at San Francesco Grand in Milan. (The other two paintings of the triptych were commissioned by other artists.) The contract, dated April 25, 1483, has survived to this day, and it contains interesting details regarding what the painting should be and which Order received it. The dimensions were meticulously negotiated in the contract, as the frame for the triptych had already been made. It is strange that the dimensions are observed in both versions, although why he painted two paintings is unknown. However, we can speculate about different interpretations of the plot, which have little to do with the pursuit of perfection, and the author was aware of their explosive potential.

The contract also specifies the theme of the painting. It was necessary to write an event that is not mentioned in the Gospels, but widely known from Christian legend. According to legend, Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus, while fleeing to Egypt, took refuge in a cave, where they met the baby John the Baptist, who was guarded by the archangel Gabriel. The value of this legend is that it allows one to leave aside one of the quite obvious but inconvenient questions regarding the gospel story of the baptism of Jesus. Why did the originally sinless Jesus suddenly need baptism at all, given that the ritual is a symbolic washing away of sins and a declaration of commitment to divinity? Why does God's Son have to go through a procedure that is an act of Baptist authority?

Legend says that at this wonderful meeting of two holy babies, Jesus gave his cousin John the right to baptize him when they become adults. There are many reasons why the order given by the Order to Leonardo can be considered an irony of fate, but equally there is reason to suspect that Leonardo was very pleased with the order and the interpretation of the scene, in at least one version, was clearly his own.

In the spirit of the time and in accordance with their tastes, the members of the fraternity would like to see a luxurious, richly decorated canvas with an ornament of gold leaves with many cherubim and prophets of the Old Testament who were supposed to fill the space. As a result, they got something so strikingly different from their idea that the relationship between the Order and the artist not only deteriorated, but became hostile, culminating in a legal battle that dragged on for more than twenty years.

Leonardo chose to portray the scene as realistically as possible, without including a single extraneous character: there were no plump cherubim, no shadow-like prophets announcing future destinies. In the picture, the number of characters was reduced to a minimum, perhaps even excessively. Although it is assumed that the Holy Family is depicted during the flight to Egypt, Joseph is not in the picture.

The canvas in the Louvre - an earlier version - depicts a Madonna in a blue robe, whose hand hugs her son, protecting him, another child - next to the Archangel Gabriel. It is curious that the children look alike, but the child with a blessing angel and the baby Mary, who knelt in humility, looks even more strange. In this regard, some versions suggested that Leonardo, for some reason, placed the baby John next to Mary. Ultimately, the picture does not indicate which of the babies is Jesus, but, of course, the right to give the blessing should belong to Jesus. However, the picture can be interpreted in other ways, and this interpretation not only implies the presence of hidden and highly unorthodox messages, but strengthens the codes used in other works of Leonardo. Perhaps the similarity of the two children is due to the fact that Leonardo deliberately made them that way for his own purposes. And also while Mary protects the child who is considered John with her left hand, her right hand is extended over the head of Jesus in such a way that this gesture seems to be a gesture of frankly hostile. It is about this hand that Serge Brumley writes in his recently published biography of Leonardo as "resembling the claws of an eagle." Gabriel points to the child of Mary, but, besides this, he mysteriously looks at the observer - that is, clearly not at the Madonna and her baby. It may be easier to interpret this gesture as pointing to the Messiah, but there is another possible meaning in this part of the composition.

And what if the baby with Mary in the version of the painting "Madonna of the Rocks" stored in the Louvre - Jesus is a very logical assumption - and the baby with Gabriel is John? Remember that in this case John blesses Jesus, and he bows down to his authority. Gabriel, John's protector, doesn't even look at Jesus. And Mary, protecting her son, raised her hand in a threatening gesture over the head of the child John. A few inches below her hand, the pointing hand of the Archangel Gabriel cuts through the space, as if these two hands were forming some kind of mysterious key. It looks like Leonardo is showing us that an object - important but invisible - has to fill the space between the hands. In this context, it does not seem fantastic to assume that Mary's outstretched fingers are holding the crown, which she places on the invisible head, and Gabriel's pointing finger cuts the space exactly where this head should be. This phantom head floats high above the child who is next to the archangel Gabriel ... Thus, is there any indication in the picture as to which of the two will die through the beheading? And if the assumption is correct, then it is John the Baptist who gives the blessing, he is of higher rank.

At the same time, turning to the later version, which is in the National Gallery, we find that all the elements that allow making such a heretical assumption have disappeared - but only these elements. The appearance of the children is completely different, and the one next to Mary has the traditional cross of the Baptist with an elongated longitudinal part (although it may have been added by another artist later). In this version, Mary's hand is also extended over the other child, but there is no threat in her gesture. Gabriel no longer points anywhere, and his gaze is not taken away from the unfolded scene. It looks like Leonardo invites us to play a game of "spot the differences in two pictures" and draw certain conclusions when we determine the anomalies of the first option.

This kind of examination of Leonardo's creations reveals many provocative implications. With the help of several ingenious devices, signals and symbols, it seems to us that the theme of John the Baptist is constantly repeated. Again and again, he or the images that represent him rise above Jesus, even - if, of course, we are right - in the symbols displayed in the Turin Shroud.

Behind such perseverance, one can feel the tenacity, manifested, at least, in the very complexity of the images that Leonardo used, and also, of course, in the risk that he took upon himself, presenting the world with heresy, even if so clever and subtle. Perhaps, as we have hinted, the reason for so many unfinished works is not the desire for perfection, but the awareness of what could happen to him if someone of sufficient authority sees through a thin layer of orthodoxy the direct blasphemy contained in the picture. In all likelihood, even such an intellectual and physical giant as Leonardo preferred to be careful, fearing to tarnish himself before the authorities - once was enough for him. However, there is no doubt that he did not need to put the chapter on the block, inserting such heretical messages into his paintings, if he did not have a passionate faith in them. As we have already seen, he was far from being an atheistic materialist, as many of our contemporaries claim. Leonardo was a deeply, seriously believer, but his faith was the complete opposite of what then - and now - is the mainstream of Christianity. Many people call this belief occult.

Most people nowadays, upon hearing this term, immediately imagine something that is by no means positive. Usually it is used in relation to black magic, or to the antics of outright charlatans, or to refer to both. But in fact, "occult" means only "hidden" and is often used in English in astronomy, when one celestial object overlaps another. With regard to Leonardo, everyone will agree: of course, although there were sinful rituals and the use of magic in his life, it is still true that above all and above all he sought knowledge. Most of what he was looking for was, however, effectively driven underground, turned into an occult society and in particular by one powerful and omnipresent organization. In most European countries, the Church did not approve of scientific pursuits and with decisive measures silenced those who made public their unorthodox views or opinions that diverged from the generally accepted one.

But Florence - the city where Leonardo was born and where his career began at court - was a thriving center of a new wave of knowledge. This happened only because the city became a refuge for a large number of influential magicians and people engaged in occult sciences. The first patrons of Leonardo, the Medici family, which ruled Florence, actively encouraged the practice of the occult and paid a lot of money for the search and translation of especially valuable ancient manuscripts. This fascination with intimate knowledge during the Renaissance cannot be compared with modern newspaper horoscopes. While sometimes areas of research have been - and inevitably - naive or simply superstitious, much of it can be called a serious attempt to understand the universe and man's place in it. Magicians, however, went a little further - they were looking for ways to control the forces of nature. In this light, it becomes clear: there is nothing special about the fact that Leonardo, among others, was actively engaged in occultism at that time, in such a place. Respected historian Dame Frances Yates has suggested that the key to understanding Leonardo's genius, which stretches so far into the future, lies in contemporary ideas about magic.

You will find a detailed description of the philosophical ideas that dominated the occult movement of Florence in our previous book, but the views of all groups of that time were based on Hermeticism, named after Hermes Trismegistus, the great, legendary Egyptian magician, in whose writings a logical system of magic was built. The most important concept of these views was the thesis of the partly divine nature of man - a thesis that threatened so much the power of the Church over the minds and hearts of people that he was doomed to anathema. The principles of Hermeticism are clearly traced in the life and works of Leonardo, but, at first glance, there is a striking contradiction between these complex philosophical and cosmological views and heretical delusions, which are nevertheless based on belief in biblical characters. (We must emphasize that the unorthodox views of Leonardo and his people were not only a reaction to corruption and other shortcomings of the Church. History has shown that there was a different reaction to these shortcomings of the Roman Church, and the reaction was not underground, but in the form of a powerful open Protestant movement. But If Leonardo were alive today, we would hardly have seen him praying in this other Church.)

There is ample evidence that the Hermeticists could have been absolute heretics.

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), a fanatical Hermeticist, proclaimed that the source of his faith is the Egyptian religion, which predates Christianity and overshadows it with its wisdom. Part of this thriving occult world were alchemists who could only be clandestine for fear of church disapproval. Again, this group is underestimated due to modern bias. Today they are looked upon as fools who have wasted their lives in vain to try to turn simple metals into gold. In fact, these pursuits were a useful cover for serious alchemists who were more interested in truly scientific experimentation, along with personality transformation and the potential to control their own destiny. Again, it is not difficult to assume that a person so passionately thirsting for knowledge as Leonardo will be a participant in this movement, perhaps even one of the main ones. There is no direct evidence of this kind of occupation of Leonardo, but it is known that he hobnobbed with people devoted to the ideas of occultism of all kinds. Our research into the falsification of the Turin Shroud allows us to assume with a high degree of certainty that the display on the fabric is the result of his own "alchemical" experiments. (Moreover, we have concluded that photography itself was once one of the greatest secrets of alchemy.)

Let us try to formulate it in a simpler way: it is unlikely that Leonardo was unfamiliar with any of the systems of knowledge that existed at that time; however, given the risk of being openly involved with these systems, it is equally unlikely that he would entrust any evidence of this to paper. At the same time, as we have seen, the symbols and images that he repeatedly used in his so-called Christian paintings would hardly have received the approval of the churchmen if they had guessed their true character.

Even so, the fascination with hermeticism may seem, at least at first glance, almost at the exact opposite end of the scale in relation to John the Baptist and the supposed importance of the woman "M". Indeed, this contradiction puzzled us so much that we were forced to dive deeper and deeper into research. Of course, it is possible to dispute the conclusion that all these endless raised index fingers mean that John the Baptist was obsessiongenius of the Renaissance. However, is there a deeper meaning to Leonardo's personal faith? Was the message encrypted with symbols in any way true?

There is no doubt that the master has long been known in occult circles as the possessor of secret knowledge. When we began to investigate his participation in the falsification of the Turin Shroud, we came across many rumors circulating among the people of this circle that he not only had a hand in its creation, but was also a famous magician with a high reputation. There is even a nineteenth-century Parisian billboard advertising the Rose + Cross Salon - a famous meeting place for people in the artistic circles of the occult - in which Leonardo is depicted as the Guardian of the Holy Grail (in these circles, this meant the Guardian of the Highest Secrets). Of course, rumors and a billboard do not mean anything in themselves, but all taken together sparked our interest in the unknown personality of Leonardo.