New Research Reveals Leonardo da Vinci’s Mother Was a 15-Year-Old Orphan

A complete and accurate version of Leonardo's Da Vinci's family tree has stumped art historians for centuries. With only theories and speculations to go off of, scholars had spent years trying to nail down the true identity of the artist's mother—until now. According toThe Guardian, Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of art history at Oxford and one of the leading authorities on da Vinci, has revealed that the artist's mother was a "poor and vulnerable" orphan named Caterina di Meo Lippi and only 15 when she was seduced and impregnated by a lawyer from Florence named Ser Piero da Vinci. Caterina's story isn't a happy one: her father didn't work and supposedly died young, while and her grandmother and infant stepbrother, Papo, died before 1451, leaving her with nothing. Da Vinci's father was already engaged to be married, so Caterina was married off quickly to a local farmer named Antonio di Piero Buti while the young Leonardo was raised in the home of his grandfather, Antonio da Vinci.