April 15th is the birthday of Leonard da
Vinci. The year was 1452, so 2012 marks
the 550th anniversary of his birth.
Connection to Scott? Tenuous, at
best. Unless you’re a "Da Vinci Code"
fan. But Ms. Rosina Drew, possibly the
last living person to have met Scott, celebrated her 100th birthday (in
1911) by presenting a communion table to the Rhu parish church, which included
an image of da Vinci’s Last Supper. The
story is a recent one, published in Helensburgh Heritage.
From Donald Fullerton’s article, with a link to the full
text here:
http://www.helensburgh-heritage.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=893:centenarian-knew-sir-walter-scott&catid=39:people-&Itemid=399
‘FLAGS
were at half-mast throughout Helensburgh and Rhu when a much-loved centenarian
died at what is now the Ardencaple Hotel.
In
the summer of 2011 a photo of Rosina Drew when she was 100 turned up in the
United States after a house in the Kansas-Missouri area was cleared, and hers
is a fascinating story.
She
was born Rosina Elizabeth Douglas on August 31 1811, daughter of master mariner
William Douglas and his wife Rosina Service, at their Troon home — almost a
year before Henry Bell’s Comet began to ply on the Clyde and four years before
the battle of Waterloo.
She
spent much of her youth with her widowed aunt, Mrs Gilbert Douglas, at Orbiston
in Lanarkshire.
One
of the reasons she was well known in later life was because when she was 18 she
met literary giant Sir Walter Scott.
He
paid a three or four day visit to her aunt in Orbiston, and the young Miss
Douglas was delighted to be old enough to be included in the dinner party
invited to meet the distinguished guest, who seemed happy and in almost boyish
spirits…
The front of the oak communion table, made in London, has a machine-carved representation in deep relief of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper…’
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