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Chapter 25
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Da Vinci Code, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Conspiracies and Secrets
Art and Symbolism
Faith vs. Knowledge
Sacred Femininity and Revisionist History
Power and Manipulation
Summary
Analysis
Langdon approaches the Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world despite its small dimensions. Behind him, Sophie sweeps the floor with her blacklight. Langdon believes the Mona Lisa owes her fame not to artistic merit, but to Da Vinci’s claim that she was his “finest accomplishment.” Langdon flashes back to his most recent lecture on the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile, delivered to inmates as part of a prison education program. Langdon pointed out how Da Vinci made the landscape behind Mona Lisa uneven to showcase her feminine side (the left) over the masculine (the right). Despite Da Vinci’s apparent preference for “feminine principles”, Langdon claims the artist was more interested in the balance between male and female characteristics.
Da Vinci’s enigmatic Mona Lisa is one of the paintings Langdon believes contains hidden symbolism. In his lecture, he points out how Da Vinci prioritizes Mona Lisa’s feminine side over the masculine, alluding to his own reverence for divine womanhood. Here again, the novel illustrates how art is a potent medium to subtly promote the artist’s personal convictions.
Themes
The inmates were surprisingly engaged with Langdon’s lecture. One asked if the Mona Lisa is Da Vinci in drag. Langdon confirmed this is possible, but he insisted the Mona Lisa is androgynous—neither male nor female. To prove his point, he referenced the Egyptian fertility god, Amon, and his female counterpart, the goddess Isis (sometimes called L’Isa). Their names are an anagram of Mona Lisa, making Langdon certain that she smiles because of her secret: she symbolizes “the divine union of male and female.” In the present, Sophie locates a spot of blood with the blacklight, indicating Saunière was here. Langdon lifts the light toward the Mona Lisa’s glass case, revealing six luminous words.
Langdon asserts that Da Vinci intended the Mona Lisa to represent the divine union between masculine and feminine energies—a concept more present in pagan religions than the Christianity which was dominant during the artist’s lifetime. To emphasize this point, her name is an anagram of two Egyptian fertility deities whose union facilitates creation. It’s safe to assume that within the world of the novel, Da Vinci deliberately obscured the painting’s true meaning because it was contrary to the Church’s doctrine of male dominance. Again, the appearance of blood precedes another revelation: another clue from Saunière.
Themes
