- U-Report
VIVA – Leonardo da Vinci was only half-Italian as his mother was a slave from the Caucasus, research has revealed. It was previously believed that da Vinci's mother Caterina was a Tuscan peasant – but an expert on the Renaissance master believes the truth is more complicated.
The book of The Smile of Caterina caused a stir because it told Leonardo Da Vinci's mother named Caterina was a slave and not Italian. It was written by a Renaissance scholar from the University of Naples, Carlo Vecce, who said Caterina was a woman from the Caucasus.
Carlo Vecce found an important document about Leonardo Da Vinci while writing the book. The document turned out to belong to Leonardo Da Vinci's father, Ser Piero.
In the document, Ser Piero mentions having freed a slave girl from Italian businessman Monna Ginevra. The same document also mentions the slave named Caterina who has worked with Monna Ginevra for two years.
It is also mentioned in the document that Caterina was a slave brought from the Caucasus region in Central Asia to be trafficked to Italy.
Leonardo Da Vinci.
- U-Report
"I discovered the document about a slave named Caterina five years ago and it became an obsession for me. I then searched and found the supporting documents. In the end, I was able to find evidence for the most probable hypotheses. We can't say it is certain, we don't look for the absolute truth, we look for the highest degree of truth, and this is the most obvious hypothesis." said Vecce, a professor of Italian literature at the University of Naples "L'Orientale,"
Vecce planned to continue his research in Moscow, where he felt sure he could find even more documentation about the slave trade in Italy and Caterina's life. But the Covid-19 pandemic put a halt to his travel plans, and instead, he said, he became "obsessed" with the story.
"The more I went forward, the more the story made sense. The story of a slave who was kidnapped at 13 and liberated at 25, the year after Leonardo was born. What should have been the most beautiful years of her life were spent as a slave," he said.
Da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in Anchiano, a hamlet near the Tuscan town of Vinci, about 25 miles west of Florence. His full birth name was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, which means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci."
It had been thought that his mother was a local peasant named Caterina and his father a wealthy notary, according to official biographies of his life that were published on the 500th anniversary of his death in 2019.
He was born out of wedlock, and both parents married other people after his birth, but he spent his childhood on his father's estate, where he was educated and treated like a legitimate son.
There had been some suggestion within academic circles that Caterina had in fact been a slave, but there had never been any documentary evidence to support this theory – until now. Vecce said the slave trade in Italy is rarely talked about, which may have led to the delay in this discovery.
Not everyone agrees, however.
Martin Kemp, a leading Leonardo scholar and emeritus professor of art history at the University of Oxford, expressed more caution about Vecce's theory.
"There have been several claims that Leonardo's mother was a slave. This fits the need to find something exceptional and exotic in Leonardo's background, and a link to slavery fits with current concerns." Kemp stated.
