Her name was Caterina, the mother of Leonardo da Vinci, reveals a document discovered in the State Archives of Florence that reveals that the woman was a princess of the Circassians, daughter of Prince Yakob, who ruled one of the kingdoms on the highlands of the northern mountains of the Caucasus: after being kidnapped, probably by the Tartars, she was enslaved and resold to the Venetians. Professor Carlo Vecce, philologist and historian of the Renaissance, professor at the University of Naples "L'Orientale" reveals the details on the new identity of the mother of the genius of the Renaissance, who would therefore have been only half Italian. The announcement of the discovery, which could put a definitive word on the identity of the woman who gave birth to Leonardo, was given this morning in Florence, at the headquarters of Giunti Editore.

Antonio Franchini, editorial director of Giunti Editore, commented: "We are facing a historical discovery of revolutionary importance". A judgment that was immediately shared by the historian Paolo Galluzzi, academic of the Lincei. In addition, Professor Vecce premiered to the international press his first novel, "Il sorriso di Caterina. Leonardo's mother". ''It's a docu-fiction based on a true story, where the names of the characters mentioned are the real ones, found in the manuscripts I consulted''. In the Archive of Florence, signed by Leonardo's father, Piero da Vinci, a notary of the Florentine countryside, Professor Vecce brought to light the act of liberation of Caterina "filia Jacobi eius schiava seu serva de partibus Circassie". The deed dated November 2, 1452, about six months after Leonardo's birth, at the request of the owner of the slave, a certain Ginevra d'Antonio Redditi, wife of Donato di Filippo di Salvestro Births

Leonardo was Piero's eldest son but not Caterina's, because, Vecce explained on the basis of documents from the State Archives of Florence, such as the "Ricordanze" of the humanist scholar Francesco di Matteo Castellani, it appears that in 1450 she had already been "impregnated" resulting in fact a nurse who breastfed. Vecce also speculates that the notary Piero made love to Caterina in Palazzo Castellani, now home to the Museo Galileo, on the Florentine riversides. According to the reconstruction of Carlo Vecce, the journey from the mountains of the Caucasus brought Catherine with chains in her hands to Azov, the ancient Tana, at the mouth of the Don River, from which she was then transported, through the Black Sea, in 1439 to Constantinople: here it passed into the hands of Venetian merchants, who transferred her to the Venice lagoon the following year, while in 1442 she arrived in Florence around the age of 15, where she was servant and nurse in the house of Geneva. It was here that Caterina met Piero da Vinci, the notary with whom she conceived her illegitimate son born on April 15, 1452, in Anchiano, a small village in the municipality of Vinci.