by Philip Coppens
Life in the shadow of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is, in essence, what the world’s fiction bestseller list has become. Still, one book, The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, is what The Independent described as “The Da Vinci Code for people with brains.” Both books have a lot in common, including sharing the top of the international bestsellers list. The common theme is code-breaking, set against the backdrop of the Italian Renaissance: one book uses da Vinci’s paintings as a series of clues, the other an enigmatic book, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The book was written at a time when Leonardo da Vinci was alive – but had yet to paint the Mona Lisa. Brown plays with the “Mona Lisa” to make it into “Amon Isis”, whereas the Hypnerotomachia is a quest for the island of Venus – the Roman Isis.
Read the original article at: Corpus Hermiticum
