While it is well established that Leonardo da Vinci’s father was Florentine lawyer Ser Piero da Vinci, the identity of the famous painter’s mother has long been surrounded in mystery. Beyond the name “Caterina”, little was known about the woman. Recent scholarship has even suggested the she may have been an Arab slave.

A new book by art historian Martin Kemp and economist and art researcher Giuseppe Pallanti, however, claims a different origin, citing archival records – including property tax records – in Florence and in Vinci that point to a 15-year-old peasant named Caterina di Meo Lippi. According to Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, Di Meo Lippi was 15 when she became pregnant with Leonardo, the conception lining up with a break Ser Piero da Vinci took in 1451.

“Nice summer’s evening probably in the fields — and that was it,” Kemp told The Times in London, describing Caterina – who lived with her grandmother and then an aunt and uncles as “a peasant fallen on bad times, and you cannot be much lower in the social pile than that.”

“To be a 16-year-old with an illegitimate son and no house was about as bad as it gets,” he said.

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