An analysis of a nearly 600-year-old document by Carlo Vecce, a professor of Italian literature at the Oriental University of Naples, found that the Italian Renaissance genius Leonardo

Da Vinci was not a pure Italian.

(taken from the Internet)

[Compilation of Lu Yongshan/Comprehensive Report] According to the report of the science news website Live Science, an analysis of a nearly 600-year-old document found that the greatest painter, inventor, architect and scientist of the Italian Renaissance Leonardo.

Leonardo da Vinci, whose mother, Caterina, was kidnapped and enslaved in the Caucasus as a teenager before being sent to Italy.

Documents discovered by Italian literary and historians show that Caterina was kidnapped from her home in the Circassia region on the Black Sea coast before being transported to Venice.

If the record in this document is correct, it means that Leonardo was only half Italian.

Please read on...

Carlo Vecce, a professor of Italian literature at the Oriental University of Naples who discovered the document, made the discovery the subject of his historical novel, The Smile of Leonardo's Mother Caterina. (The Smile of Caterina, the Mother of Leonardo).

"Leonardo's mother was a Circassian slave who was abducted from her home in the Caucasus Mountains and held in Constantinople and Venice," Weich said at a press conference on March 14. It was resold several times and finally arrived in Florence, where she met Piero da Vinci, a young notary and Leonardo's father."

Researching da Vinci's family history is difficult because, until now, only his paternal lineage could be properly traced.

Others believe that da Vinci's mother was an orphan living in an abandoned farmhouse when she met Piero.

The only known fact about the Da Vinci family is that his parents were not officially married.

But when Welch conducted research in the National Archives of Florence, he discovered previously unknown documents, including a Latin certificate signed by Piero and dated November 2, 1452, proving that Catalina was freed from slavery.

Wech said that in 1451, Caterina was bought by a Florentine knight as a nurse for a child, and then met Piero.

"The notary who liberated Caterina was the one who fell in love with her when she was a slave and by whom Da Vinci was born," Wech said.

Paolo Galluzzi, curator emeritus of the Galileo Museum in Florence, said: "Vecchi's reconstruction is very convincing, it is the most convincing reconstruction to date, and it makes a lot of sense based on the new original documents."

But not all historians believe in this theory.

Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of art history at the University of Oxford, said Catalina was a generic term for female slaves who were forced to convert to Christianity, so the documents could refer to others.

According to Camp, Leonardo da Vinci's mother was the daughter of a local farmer in Florence.

Italian historian and novelist Angelo Paratico pointed out in an interview in 2014 that according to his research, Da Vinci’s mother Caterina may have been a female slave from China, and boldly speculated that Da Vinci Xi's handed down painting "Mona Lisa", the painting is his mother.

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