The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra

The Spanish novelist Javier Sierra has written a scintillating murder mystery, The Secret Supper, that, like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, attempts to decode the unique features of this crumbling five-centuries-old fresco on the wall of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan.

Sierra's book, which sold 250,000 in his native Spain (pop. 40 million) before becoming a bestseller throughout Europe, has finally arrived here in a seamless English translation by Canadian writer Alberto Manguel. The Da Vinci Code cannot hold a candle to it for sophistication.

Though they both draw inspiration from the same well, in the words of Australian critic Alan Gold, "any comparison between Sierra and Brown is similar to pitting a Renaissance painter against a graffiti artist."

"I did not read Dan Brown's book until I finished my manuscript; it had just come out in Spanish and I wasn't going to read it but my wife pushed me," says Sierra, whose latest book was first out in 2004 as La cena secreta. It is the 34-year-old author's seventh work (three non-fiction, four novels).

"It was not news to me: many of his sources were well-known to me," he says. "His book is not well finished; the end is poor. But it excited the imagination of people and invited them to look for more information, and that has been wonderful for my book."

The Secret Supper has been published in 35 countries and is set to explode here. When we spoke in Toronto this week, Sierra was finishing a 10-city tour with his wife Eva, a ballet teacher whom he credits with helping him develop the psychology of his characters. An avid traveller, he speaks fluent English.

If you have not yet read The Da Vinci Code, this is your spoiler alert - Brown's plot hinges on the supposed marriage of Mary Magdelene and Jesus, based on the contention that the feminine figure next to Christ in The Last Supper represents the Magdelene. In Sierra's scheme, and according to art historians, that figure is John the Evangelist.

"Many masters in the Middle Ages used female models to paint John to give the idea of his purity," says Sierra. "I am sure Leonardo's model for this character was a lady, but the figure is John. We know that from Leonardo's notes. If we accept that it's the Magdelene, then where is John? We are missing a very important disciple."

The Secret Supper is set in late 15th-century Milan and most, though not all, of Sierra's characters are carefully researched historical figures. The story is told by a fictional monk, Father Augustino Leyre, who is dispatched by the Inquisition in Rome to check whether the unconventional fresco Leonardo is painting embodies heretical notions.

If Leonardo is not a heretic, why do Christ and his disciples not wear halos? Why is there no chalice or Paschal lamb on the supper table? Why no Eucharist? Who are the models for the Apostles and why do some have their backs turned to the Saviour?

You can find the review here

Interview with Javier Sierra about The Secret Supper

In ``The Secret Supper'' Leonardo da Vinci is accused of heresy as his latest and overly original painting showing Jesus Christ dining with his 12 disciples provokes the fury of Pope Alexander VI.

Just translated into English, the novel by the Spanish journalist Javier Sierra is already a bestseller in Spain, where it has sold about 250,000 copies since its 2004 publication. Those are huge numbers, if not quite up to the ``other'' thriller featuring Jesus and the works of Leonardo, Dan Brown's ``The Da Vinci Code,'' which has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Sierra spoke with me at Bloomberg's New York headquarters about da Vinci's genius, his own novel and the competition.

Schatz: People inevitably compare ``The Secret Supper'' to ``The Da Vinci Code.'' How are they different?

Sierra: Dan Brown uses Leonardo da Vinci like a cultural reference. In my book, Leonardo is still alive; he's painting his masterpiece ``The Last Supper'' in the convent Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan.

My main purpose was to get in contact with the mind of the genius, to enter the mind of Leonardo. And that was not the purpose of Dan Brown. The ``Da Vinci Code'' is a page turner; mine is also a page turner, but ``The Da Vinci Code'' is a contemporary thriller and mine is more like Umberto Eco's ``The Name of the Rose.''

You can find the full interview here

The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra

What is it about Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" that captivates the imagination?

Is it his vivid depiction of the moment Jesus tells his followers one of them will betray him?

The puzzling absence of the bread and chalice symbolizing his body and blood?

Or the startlingly feminine appearance of the disciple seated at his right hand?

Dan Brown turned his theories about "The Last Supper" into a taut thriller that topped best-seller lists and was snapped up by Hollywood. But he wasn't the only writer to see literary gold in da Vinci's peeling fresco.

Javier Sierra, a Spanish author who's written on the secrets of the Templars and the enigmas of lost civilizations, was researching clues the painter may have hidden in his masterpiece at the same time Brown was writing "The Da Vinci Code."

The result is "The Secret Supper," a best-selling novel in the Spanish-speaking world that captured one of Spain's top literary awards in 2004. It likely will ride "The Da Vinci Code's" coattails to popularity in the United States now that it's finally been published in English.

You can find the review here

The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra

While Dan Brown saw significance in the letter formations created in the fresco -- the perfect W created by Jesus at the centre, for one -- Sierra plumbs a hidden phrase from the letters of the Apostles names and their positions on the mural.

Leonardo is an enigma himself, always dressed in white like Apostle Simon and living a secretive life with a stable of young apprentices. He refuses to eat meat and is said to practice celibacy (except, as the author points out, he "fancied men -- which would make him not as celibate as some assert").

While waiting for inspiration, Leonardo is said to have worked slavishly on his inventions, mostly of a labour-saving nature but whose success was often determined by the number of fatalities they caused. To keep his notes from prying eyes, he wrote backwards using a mirror.

What Sierra reads into The Last Supper is that Leonardo was a Cathar, a sect that practised abstinence from food and sex to purify themselves but which was thought to have been exterminated during the Crusades in Southern France in 1244. Also factored into this story is a mysterious blue book owned by Leonardo, one said to have recorded a discussion between Saint John and Jesus in heaven.

The ancient Oriental treatise, the death of many in Sierra's story, is called Interrogatio Johannis, or The Secret Supper. It was purportedly the bible of a new church, one that would fly in the face of Catholicism. Were its contents encoded in Da Vinci's mural?

From a European standpoint, The Secret Supper is, like Da Vinci's fresco, a masterpiece -- the most talked about book of the year -- from an already popular Costa del Sol author who cut his teeth on a series of earlier historical enigmas, including one about the secretive Templar sect.

Rights to the novel have been sold in 25 countries and its release 10 days ago was accompanied by a no-holds-barred, Da Vinci Code-style marketing campaign.

Unlike Brown's epic tale, Sierra keeps you guessing to the bitter end -- the last line on the last page of the book's last chapter, in fact. What Sierra has produced is more than just a clever, spine-tingling mystery but a great divide -- those who will swear by Brown and those who put Sierra to the head of the Da Vinci class.

In truth, Sierra's story -- soon to face The Da Vinci Code's heavy Hollywood guns -- is more than just a contender. It leaves Brown's fabled tale in the dust.

Be warmed though: If you don't thoroughly enjoy The Last Supper, there's no dessert.

You can find the review here

The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra

The "Da Vinci" wannabes just keep coming. Europe's highest-profile entry in the sweepstakes is The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra, translated from the original Spanish by Alberto Manguel.

This is a considerably better novel than most pretenders to the mystical-thriller throne. While it covers similar ground to Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," this is a moodier and generally more intellectual story, with an undertone of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose."

One thing that immediately distinguishes "The Secret Supper" is that Leonardo Da Vinci is in fact a character in the tale, and he's depicted with an agreeably enigmatic puckishness. The novel takes place in 1497, as Leonardo is completing "The Last Supper" in Milan.

Virtually everyone, from Pope Alexander VI to the monks cohabiting with the painting, suspect that Leonardo is concealing a mysterious (and possibly blasphemous) message in the work. But no one can decipher it.

You can find the review here

Interview with Javier Sierra

An interview with the Spanish author of The Secret Supper (La cena secreta)

Q: Javier, how would you describe La cena secreta to those who are not familiar with your work?
A: I would describe it as a kind of atlas or guide to learn a new language. It’s not only a novel, but a tool that teaches the reader how to interpret works of art from the past. In fact, I think if La cena secreta has any virtues, it’s the virtue of giving us back the capacity to read art-a capacity we lost with the discovery of printing and with the literacy of our culture and civilization. In the 15th century, not everyone could read. Very few had access to books. Therefore, the formula they used in the past to convey information was through works of art; almost everyone could read art then, something that doesn’t happen now.

Q: Our audience is bilingual Hispanics who are 50 and older. Have you noticed a difference in how various generations respond to your book?
A: Well, there are different approaches to the book, depending on the reader’s age. I think that every good book has different levels of reading. To young people, it’s a thriller, a book of action, of intrigue, of mysteries. It’s kind of like a giant puzzle that they assemble piece by piece. And middle-aged people have discovered that the book tries to bring them closer to a significant aspect of religion. Deep inside, all the characters in La cena secreta fight to find their faith, their real faith. And I think it’s very important for people of a certain age, or any age, to find their real faith.

Q: And do you have an ideal reader?
A: I think that the ideal reader of my books is the reader who feels curiosity and hasn’t lost the capacity to be surprised. It’s a reader who, even though he’s an adult, retains a child’s spirit; he keeps the capacity to be amazed by the things he doesn’t know. He’s capable of opening his eyes very wide to understand more than what he’s been taught. That is my ideal reader: the curious reader.

Q: Which authors have in some way influenced your work?
A: I feel I owe a big debt of gratitude to authors like Umberto Eco, the Italian writer and semiologist. He’s a very intelligent person who in his novels introduces many cultural references and mysteries, but they’re facts. They’re facts, real things. And his books have enabled millions of people in the world to get closer to fragments of classical culture that otherwise would have remained inaccessible to a mass audience. I also admire the great creators of thrillers, of intrigue, of fiction. From Ken Follett with his work in Pillars of the Earth to other contemporary masters like Dan Brown. I discovered Dan Brown when I was about to finish writing La cena secreta.

You can find the full interview here

The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra

A review of Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper

A new novel, based "90 per cent on historical facts", depicts Leonardo Da Vinci as a heretic who painted his own face into The Last Supper, and claims that the painting portrays Saint Peter as a traitor and carries a blasphemous message.

The The Secret Supper, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in Europe, is set to rival The Da Vinci Code for conspiracy theories about one of the most famous figures in art history.

The novel portrays Da Vinci as a Cathar, a member of a gnostic sect outlawed by the Roman Catholic Church.

The story, which is being fought over by Hollywood studios hoping to emulate The Da Vinci Code phenomenon, is set in 1497 and told by Fr Augustin Leyre, a Vatican monk and expert code-breaker.

He is sent to infiltrate the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, the home of The Last Supper, after anonymous letters to the Pope accuse Da Vinci of concealing subversive ideas in his work. The monk deciphers the painting into a series of Cathar messages, revealing Da Vinci's denunciation of the Church.

Javier Sierra, the novel's Spanish author, claims that most his characters and events are based on historical records. "The book is fiction but 90 per cent of the facts are real," he said.

You can find the full review here