Dan Brown's Inferno will be released on May 14, 2013. Teasers point to Florence, Italy and Dante Alighieri but until this great work of American literature is upon us, it is all speculation. Fueled by the possibility of what secrets lie inside those pages, The Daily Grail's Greg Taylor published an ebook where he explores the strange subjects Brown likely raises in the new novel. Over at TDG, Greg posted some bits from his book, Inside Dan Brown's Inferno:
The Lost LeonardoA number of art scholars believe that the Palazzo Vecchio (mentioned above) has hidden somewhere within it a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci, The Battle of Anghiari. Da Vinci is, of course, intimately connected to Dan Brown's works, and so given the likely use of Palazzo Vecchio as a location, this is certainly a topic that could easily be used in Inferno.
There is further support for this possibility in the fact that, on the cover of the Italian cover for Inferno, instead of the coded letters CATROACCR, we find the letters CATROVACER. This seems to be a direct anagram of 'Cerca trova' ('Seek and you will find').* This phrase is directly related to the search for the 'lost Leonardo': an Italian expert in the analysis of art through technological analysis, Maurizio Seracini, has claimed that a mural by Giorgio Vasari within the Palazzo Vecchio, the Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana hides a clue to Leonardo da Vinci's lost work. In the upper part of Vasari's fresco, a Florentine soldier waves a green flag with the words "Cerca trova" scrawled upon it. So far, however, no-one has managed to find the lost painting.
"Secrets of the Inferno" (TDG)
"Inferno" by Dan Brown (Amazon)
