Photo: MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP / Getty Images
By: The opinion Posted Mar 18, 2023, 18:30 pm EDT
many continue unsolved mysteries around the famous Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vincibut it seems that the one related to the origin of his mother has just been solved.
Experts have known for years that Da Vinci’s mother was called Caterinabut for a long time It was assumed that she was Italian – Muscana, more specifically – and a peasant.
However, now the archives of the city of Florence suggest that Caterina was a slave, captured and taken to Italy. That could mean his son, an Italian legend, was only part Italian.
Carlo Vecce, a professor at the University of Naples and an expert on Leonardo for decades, shared this data with AFP before the release of his novel. “The smile of Catalina, Leonardo’s mother”.
According to Vecce’s research, Caterina was a teenager taken from her home in the Caucasus Mountains, in a country then known as Circasia.and which is now part of Russia. She was taken across the Black Sea, sold, and resold to owners in Constantinople, Venice, and eventually Florence, where was acquired by a family to work as a wet nurse.
It was in the city of Florence that she met a young notary named Piero da Vinci, and in the summer of 1451 they had a son named Leonardo.
The Italian expert managed to obtain legal documents signed by Leonardo’s own father to emancipate Caterina: “Recover your freedom and recover your human dignity”. The document that freed her as a slave was dated November 2, 1452, seven months after Leonardo’s birth.
The paperwork was filled out by “the man who loved Catalina when she was still a slavegiven to him by this boy named Leonardo, and [fue] also the person who helped free her,” Vecce told AFP.
However, shortly after her son was born, Caterina married a small local ownerwith a generous dowry. The couple had five children.
His mom’s origins propelled Da Vinci
Vecce deduces that they were the difficult background of his “emigrant” mother that prompted the incredible work of da Vinciwhich covered not only the field of art, but also science, engineering, anatomy and architecture, among others.
According to him, da Vinci inherited the “spirit of freedom” from Caterina and channeled it into his trade.
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