FLORENCE, Italy — It is a mystery that has intrigued
and confounded scholars for centuries: Who, exactly, was Leonardo da Vinci’s
mother?
اضافة اعلان
A few facts are known. Her name was Caterina, and sometime
in 1451 she had a relationship with notary Piero da Vinci, and gave birth on
April 15, 1452, to a son who was born out of wedlock and baptized Leonardo. A
memorial tablet, with a record of the artist’s birth, is in the Church of Santa
Croce in the town of Vinci, about 50km from Florence, where the baptism most
likely took place.
Over the years, researchers have speculated that the
artist’s mother might have been a local peasant, an orphaned teenager of humble
birth or a woman of Jewish or Chinese origin.
Earlier this month, another theory that is likely to fuel
the academic debate was made public in Florence at a preview of a new
historical novel. Its author, historian Carlo Vecce, believes that Leonardo’s
mother was kidnapped and enslaved as a girl in the mountainous Caucasus area of
Central Asia.
“I would define it as a docu-fiction. It takes an oxymoron to explain this book because it is a combination of two traditionally distinct genres.”
The novel, “Il Sorriso di Caterina”, or “Caterina’s Smile”,
has at its scholarly core a newly found document that Vecce uncovered in the
State Archives of Florence, handwritten by Leonardo’s father. For the book,
Vecce, who teaches at the Orientale University in Naples, merged fact and
fiction to spin a tumultuous tale that takes the reader with Caterina as she
makes her way to Florence, and later Vinci, via the Sea of Azov, Constantinople
(modern-day Istanbul) and Venice. It ends with her death in Milan, where she
has joined her son, who is working at the local court.
When sound research meets fictional faces“I would define it as a docu-fiction. It takes an oxymoron
to explain this book because it is a combination of two traditionally distinct
genres,” said Paolo Galluzzi, a Leonardo expert and former director of the
Galileo Museum in Florence. He said that the book gave identities, faces and
passion to characters, elements that are absent from scholarly accounts. But
the research was sound, he said.
The documentation gathered by Vecce made a convincing case,
Galluzzi said, even if “it’s a hypothesis” destined “to spur debate”.
The document Vecce found dates to the fall of 1452, some six
months after the birth of Leonardo. It records the emancipation of an enslaved
Circassian woman named Caterina by her owner. Evidence that the document refers
specifically to Leonardo’s mother is bolstered, Vecce said on March 14 at a
news conference, by other papers that trace a chain of ownership and
familiarity with Caterina, all linked to Leonardo’s father.
Eventually, Leonardo’s father married a young Florentine
woman, and the year after Leonardo was born, Piero da Vinci arranged a marriage
between Caterina and a farmer and kiln worker who lived on the outskirts of
Vinci. Caterina went on to have four daughters and another son.
He was moved by Caterina’s story, which he said reflected the suffering of many modern-day refugees.
It could be said that Leonardo’s birth worked out in his —
and the world’s — favor. Author Walter Isaacson opens his 2017 biography of the
artist by noting: “Leonardo da Vinci had the good luck to be born out of
wedlock. Otherwise, he would have been expected to become a notary, like the
firstborn legitimate sons in his family stretching back at least five
generations.”
‘Telling the story in a different way’Vecce said that he decided on a literary approach to
broadcasting his find because he hoped to reach a wider audience, though he
mentioned in a telephone interview earlier this month that a scholarly article
was in the works. He also said that he was moved by Caterina’s story, which he
said reflected the suffering of many modern-day refugees.
“I felt the urgency of telling the story in a different
way,” he said.
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