A recently discovered note, drawn up by Leonardo da Vinci’s father, Piero, in November 1452, shows that he emancipated an enslaved woman named Caterina.
The scholar who found the document (Carlo Vecce, a professor of Italian literature) has suggested that she was Leonardo’s mother.
The claim was announced to coincide with the publication of Vecce’s novel Il Sorriso di Caterina (Caterina’s Smile) – a fictional account of the life of da Vinci’s mother. Vecce’s novel weaves together the few facts scholars agree on: that da Vinci was the illegitimate child of his father and a lower status woman and that his mother was called Caterina.
