Martin Kemp

Caterina di Cambio. Was she the mysterious mother of Leonardo da Vinci? Elisabetta Ulivi’s latest discovery.

Elisabetta Ulivi is a professor at Florence University, Department of Mathematics, and she has spent several years researching the background of Leonardo da Vinci. She has made several startling discoveries in the process, subsequently publishing books and articles.(1)
It is indeed strange that no editor has ever translated them into English with a view to having them published outside of Italy, because they are extremely important for Leonardo’s biographers.
Prof. Ulivi is going to present her latest findings during a conference at her University on the evening of November 21, 2017.

We have been fortunate to get in advance a PDF version of her speech, which will be in Italian and entitled: “Su Caterina, madre di Leonardo: vecchie e nuove ipotesi” which in English is translated as: “On Catherine, mother of Leonardo: old and new hypotheses.”

Leonardo da Vinci presumably saw the light in Vinci on 15 April 1451 and while we know a good deal about his father, a successful notary working in Florence, named Ser Piero da Vinci we know very little about his mother. We do know that was named Caterina, that she died in his arms in Milan when she was 60, on 26 June 1494 and, unfortunately, very little else. Edmondo Solmi (1875-1912) musing over her memory, in one of his books on Leonardo wrote: “It seems that nature, after having produced the miracle, wanted to cover with an impenetrable veil the place and the human being which was an instrument for that wonderful effect.”

Yes, indeed, and the veil has not been raised yet.We may say that on this matter there are two distinct views among researchers. Those who think that Caterina did not belong to the village of Vinci but was a slave – slavery having been fairly common in Tuscany, as a side effect of the depopulation caused by the Black Death (1347-1353) – while others think that Caterina was just a village girl of Vinci.
Quite recently, Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti jointly issued a book with the title of: Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting Oxford University Press, 2017. Martin Kemp announced that in his book, thanks to the archival researches carried out by Giuseppe Pallanti, a professor in Florence, the mystery had been finally solved. Caterina was a native girl of Vinci, born around 1436 to Meo di Lippo. This statement was reported in the media worldwide. After having read their book we found their arguments rather weak. (See: https://beyondthirtynine.com/the-riddle-of-leonardo-da-vincis-mother-in-the-book-of-martin-kemp-and-giuseppe-pallanti/).
Our view is confirmed by Elisabetta Ulivi, who had considered this possibility years earlier, and rejected it. Having painstakingly researched all of the Caterinas found in the archives of Vinci, a fairly common name, considering the low number of inhabitants in Vinci, about a dozen of them!
Even if Elisabetta Ulivi is not excluding that the mother of Leonardo, then bride of Accattabriga Buti of Vinci, was a domestic slave, first employed in Florence by Ser Vanni, a rich client of Ser Piero da Vinci, nevertheless she presents a new theory about one of the native girls of Vinci: Caterina di Antonio di Cambio, overlooked by Kemp and Pallanti. A girl who had connections with Leonardo da Vinci, and who is the best candidate to be the right Caterina.
She was the daughter of Antonio di Cambio and, curiously, she had a sister in law called Mona Lisa.
This girl was 13 in 1451, but her age is probably wrongly indicated in the documents from that time and, in reality, she may have been 16 years old. There are several factual proofs of the closeness between the Buti and the di Cambio, who were also neighbors in San Pantaleo, a borough of Vinci. After Leonardo da Vinci Caterina had a daughter called Piera, like the mother of Ser Piero da Vinci and then another daughter named Maria, like the mother of Antonio di Cambio. The Di Cambio was a respectable family in Vinci and this may explain why the Anonimo Gaddiano mentioned her as “di buon sangue” of good blood.

The new findings made by Prof. Ulivi may be said to be the most brilliant and well documented to connect Caterina, the mother of Leonardo, with the village of Vinci.

 

(1). Le residenze del padre di Leonardo da Vinci a Firenze nei Quartieri di Santa Croce e di Santa Maria Novella, in “Bollettino di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche”, XXVII, 1, 2007, pp. 155-171.

Per la genealogia di Leonardo. Matrimoni e altre vicende nella famiglia Da Vinci sullo sfondo della Firenze rinascimentale, a cura di Agnese Sabato e Alessandro Vezzosi, Museo Ideale Leonardo Da Vinci, Vinci, 2008.

Documenti inediti su Luca Pacioli, Piero della Francesca e Leonardo Da Vinci, con alcuni autografi, “Bollettino di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche”, XXIX, 1, 2009, pp. 15-160.

Sull’identità della madre di Leonardo, “Bullettino Storico Pistoiese”, CXI, 2009, pp. 17-49.

 

The riddle of Leonardo Da Vinci’s mother in the Book of Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti

Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti have jointly written and published an important book under the title of Mona Lisa. The people and the Painting.
In its essence, this book is an excursus around the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa. The thesis presented by the authors is the canonical one: the painting known as Mona Lisa, hanging at the Louvre of Paris, indeed represents Monna Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo and it was begun in 1503, during the second stay of Leonardo in Florence.
There is nothing new in it but Kemp and Pallanti present and discuss what has been already published on this intriguing subject over the years, with an exposition which is shining with precision and clarity and where even the tiniest details are exposed with characteristic academic rigor
The chapter which is really adding something new, making exciting reading, is the last, where the latest scientific results concerning the Mona Lisa are presented. There we find a detailed explanation on all high resolution optical findings made over the years by Pascal Cotte.

About a month ago, all over the world they were talking about this soon to be published book. The two authors enjoy a well-deserved reputation and two revelations made by Martin Kemp to the press – he is Emeritus Professor of Art at Trinity College, Oxford University and one of the top world experts on Leonardo da Vinci – caught the headlines.
Here are the two points.
The first is due to new discoveries made by Giuseppe Pallanti – a Florentine professor of economics and a keen explorer of ancient archives – about new documents supposedly revealing the identity of Catherine, the mysterious mother of Leonardo.
The second point concerns the house of Anchiano, near Vinci, where tourists go to visit the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci. Kemp claims that, in fact, Leonardo was not born there.
About this second point there is nothing new. Italian specialists of Leonardo know perfectly well that he was not born there but rather inside the village of Vinci. Well, do you remember the famous joke made by stringers? Never let the truth cross the path of a good story.

The first point raised by Martin Kemp was the one that stimulated my curiosity to the point of spending 40 USD to order the book on line, since it is going in the contrary direction of what I have claimed – together with some better qualified experts than me, like Francesco Cianchi – in my recent book on Leonardo da Vinci.

Kemp and Pallanti claim that Catherine was a poor farmer girl of Vinci and not a slave, and they dismiss the possibility that she was a slave claiming that “there was ot a trace of slaves in Vinci at that time”. This may well be but she could have been a slave removed from Florence to Vinci, after being freed and given away in marriage.

The archival documents presented in this book concern an orphan girl from Vinci named Catherine di Meo Lippi who, in July 1451 (when Leonardo was conceived) was 15 years old.
The solution to this century-old riddle lays in linking this Catherine di Meo Lippi to Catherine, wife of Antonio Buti (nicknamed Accattabriga) and a laborer close to Ser Piero da Vinci, the biological father of Leonardo.
If they could establish such connection, then it will be game over.
After Leonardo da Vinci’s birth by Catherine out of wedlock with Ser Piero da Vinci, she was given in marriage to the Accattabriga and went on to have 4 daughters and 1 son with him.

The first problem in establishing such a link between the two Catherines is the age.
We are in possession of a legal document signed by the Accattabriga, dated 1484 in which his wife Catherine is said to be 60, therefore her birthdate should be set at 1424, thus in 1451 she was 25 years old.
Another legal document where her age is mentioned is the registration of her death, in Milan, dated 1494, where again she is said to be 60, but here the only source of her age is from her son, Leonardo and possibly he was not very well aware of it… thus, it follows Catherine’s birth date was 1434 and in 1451 she was 17 years old, not 15.

In the baptism record written by Leonardo’s grandfather, Antonio da Vinci, found in 1932 by a German historian, there is the proof that Leonardo was born in Vinci and the names of several witnesses are indicated, but it is missing the name of his mother Catherine, a rather odd thing.
A similar oddity is detected for the request of tax exemption presented by Antonio da Vinci, dated 1457, where Leonardo is mentioned as a 5-year old and said to be the illegitimate son of Catherine, by then married to the Accattabriga. There is no patronymic of this Catherine,but if she was Catherine di Meo Lippi then why not say it?
Kemp and Pallanti explain this by saying that: “The tone of his record was more colloquial than formal: he spoke of ‘Catherine’ as if it were obvious locally to whom he was referring, without needing to say more”.
This seems something said to explain the inexplicable, since the document was filed in Florence and was the Florentine taxman supposed to know Catherine of Vinci?

There is no point where we find a connection between Catherine, wife of Accattabriga and Catherine di Meo Lippi. The only vague hint is the fact that the youngest daughter of Catherine and Accattabriga was named Sandra. Sandra was an uncommon name in those years but was also the name of Orso Lippi, a cousin of Catherine di Meo Lippi, living at Mattoni, a hamlet close to Vinci. But this seems a rather weak argument, in a village so scarcely populated like Vinci. Certainly Catherine, the mother of Leonardo, living at Campo Zeppi, very close to Mattoni, she had certainly met and known the wife of Orso Lippi, and perhaps they were friends, so much friends that Catherine decided to name her last daughter after her.
My wife’s second name is Stefania and she received that name because of a well-off family of a neighbor in Verona: they had a daughter with that name and it did catch the fancy of my mother in law but they were not related, just neighbors.

As Carl Sagan said: “Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proofs”.
I know something about it myself, after having written a book trying to prove that this Catherine was an Oriental slave, perhaps Chinese and I must admit that here, like in my book, the ‘smoking gun’ is missing.

Martin Kemp & Giuseppe Pallanti Mona Lisa. The people and the Painting Oxford University Press, 2017. USD34.95
ISBN 978-0-19-874990-5

For an Italian version of this article look on a blog on the Corriere della Sera:

 

http://www.corriere.it/article_preview.shtml?reason=unauthenticated&cat=1&cid=BhY9NjJP&pids=FR&origin=http%3A%2F%2Flanostrastoria.corriere.it%2F2017%2F06%2F20%2Flirrisolto-enigma-di-leonardo-da-vinci%2F