According to new evidence presented in Florence on Tuesday, the Renaissance prodigy Leonardo da Vinci was the child of a slave who was smuggled from her country in the Caucasus to Italy.
The identity of da Vinci’s mother Caterina, who had a connection with well-known notary Piero da Vinci and gave birth to Leonardo on April 15, 1452, out of wedlock, has long been a mystery.
During the introduction of his new book, a historical novel titled Il Sorriso di Caterina or Caterina’s Smile, historian Carlo Vecce, a professor at the University of Naples L’Orientale, made the assertion.
In the past, academics have conjectured that Caterina might have been a slave, an orphan, or a local peasant girl. The latter hypothesis appears to be supported by a find made by Vecce at the state archives in Florence.
The certificate, which refers to Caterina as a “slave” from “Circassia”, allows her emancipation “to restore her independence and recover her human dignity”.
Some six months after Leonardo was born in the Tuscan town of Vinci, Vecce stumbled upon a legal document written in Latin on November 2, 1452, and it was signed by none other than Piero da Vinci.
Vecce thinks Caterina was taken from the Caucasus Mountains in central Asia, maybe by Tartars.
Before arriving in Florence in 1442, she was transported over the Black Sea to Constantinople, where Venetian traders probably purchased her as a slave.
Caterina met Piero da Vinci while working as a wet nurse for a household in Florence, and he helped arrange her marriage to a local man a year after Leonardo was born. Caterina and her husband eventually had five kids. Vecce told reporters in Florence, “The notary who released Caterina was the same person who loved her when she was still a slave and with whom he had this child.
News Summary:
- According to fresh findings, Leonardo da Vinci’s mother was a slave
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