Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code centres on Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of “The Last Supper”. The book claims that the person sitting at the right hand of Jesus is not the apostle John, as is popularly supposed, but Mary Magdalene, who was married to Jesus and pregnant with his child.

After the crucifixion Mary is supposed to have escaped to Gaul to have her baby and so the bloodline of Jesus continued. The Holy Grail (the bearer of Jesus’ blood) is therefore not a chalice, but Mary Magdalene herself.

Supposedly Leonardo was a member of the Priory of Sion, a group dedicated to the protection of the secret of the Holy Grail through the ages. As you can imagine there has been fierce criticism of the book’s interpretation of “The Last Supper” and some people say what it purports to be fact is nothing but fantasy.