For the history of art it is a veritable earthquake which lifts, perhaps, the mystery of the origins of Caterina, the mother of Leonardo da Vinci.
According to Carlo Vecce, professor at the University of Naples and recognized specialist in the gesture of the Florentine genius, the author of the days of the painter of
La
Joconde
would not be the daughter of a Tuscan peasant as the vast majority of historians thought. but "
a woman abducted from her country of origin in the Caucasus mountains, a Circassian slave sold and resold several times in Constantinople and then in Venice, before she settled near the village of Vinci near Florence where
she will have a brief love affair with the young notary, Ser Piero da Vinci.
»
This sensational discovery, revealed in an article in the Italian newspaper
Corriere Della Sera
, is the visible face of a thesis that Carlo Vecce deepened in a historical novel entitled
Il sorriso di Caterina, la madre di Leonardo
(
The smile of Caterina, the mother by Leonardo da Vinci
), which has not yet been translated into French.
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The discovery of an essential document dated 1452, - the year of birth of Leonardo -, is the starting point which makes it possible to retrace the identity of Caterina di Meo Lippi.
Presented on March 14, during a press conference organized by the Florentine publishing house Giunti, by Carlo Vecce, this notarial act written by Piero da Vinci "signified the act of emancipation of Caterina
"
which gave "
his freedom and his dignity as a human being
", in the specialist's own words.
And for the latter, this archive is founding and explains a lot of the history of the Vinci family and the destiny of Leonardo: "
it is therefore the man who loved Caterina when she was still a slave and who had a child with her who the
The Life of Leonardo da Vinci
by Renato Castellani, with Philippe Leroy-Beaulieu
This new Leonardian revolution could cause a lot of ink to flow in the months and years to come.
For the moment only Professor Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the Galileo Museum and also a recognized specialist in the history of Verrocchio's brilliant disciple, has given AFP a first impression of Carlo Vecce's discovery: "The documents
analyzed by my colleague are of good quality.
And his speculation is, I must say, convincing.
But there are of course a minimum of doubts, because we cannot prove it by a DNA test
”.
All that remains is to find descendants of Caterina.
We know that after Leonardo she had other children with a certain Antonio di Piero del Vaccha known as "
Accattabriga
(the quarrelsome)... The legend of Leonardo and Caterina, which he would house in his studio at the end of his life, is not about to die out.
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