Chapter 26

Brown points out the fact that most posters of the Mona Lisa are bigger than the original. There are all sorts of potential byways down which we could take this, pondering the nature of reproduction, of images, of simulacra, of visual shorthand. Brown does ponder why this small, brown daub is the most famous painting in the world, but his explanation ("Quite simply, the Mona Lisa was famous because Leonardo da Vinci claimed she was his finest accomplishment.") doesn't quite ring true. If we knew which of their works were the favourites of Dickens or Bach, would that stop the arguments.

Clearly, we back in Langdon-as-teacher mode. Maybe it was a bit of a stretch for some readers to imagine themselves as Harvard students, even bizarrely dumb ones, so Brown really shows us how he thinks of us - doing time in the Essex County Penitentiary.

Incidentally, in the real world, there doesn't seem to be such as thing as "Amon condoms". But then, in the real world, don't the French call the Mona Lisa "La Joconde" rather than "La Jaconde"?

And we end, naturally, with a cliff-hanger. What do we think the six purple words across that enigmatic face might be?

a) An albino monk just shot me;

or

b) Some lame anagram, possibly relating to the name of a painting?