Mother of Leonardo da Vinci was reportedly a slave from the East

Rome - The mother of the architect, painter, sculptor, and inventor of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, may have been a slave from the East, given to the artist's father by a Florentine nobleman. It is said that Leonardo's father allegedly had one of his sons - Leonardo - with her while he was married to another woman. This is claimed by Italian historian Francesco Cianchi, who presented his book Caterina Schiava (Catherine the Slave) to the public this week.
The idea that Leonardo's mother Caterina was a slave from the East was first brought up by the historian's father, Renzo Cianchi, according to the coordinator of the work, Alessandro Vezzosi.
Based on the fact, known to experts, that the artist's mother was named Caterina and was not the wife of Leonardo's father, Cianchi sought evidence of her origins in the Florence area.
When he could not find any, he concluded that she was one of more than five hundred slaves owned by the Florentine nobility in the mid-15th century.
This theory was confirmed by the discovery of a will from a local nobleman, Sera Vanni, who owned a slave named Caterina and bequeathed various property to Leonardo's father, including several houses.
According to Vezzosi, it is not confirmed that Leonardo's father "inherited" the slave, but documents from that time show that traces of Caterina as a servant in the Vanni family disappear after her master's death in 1451, while a year later, a mention of Caterina appears in connection with Leonardo's father.
According to Cianchi's theory, the ownership of the slave Caterina - either through a will that has not survived or through another type of contract - passed to Piero da Vinci, who had a son with her, Leonardo da Vinci, born on April 15, 1452.
One of the weak points of this theory, as Vezzosi admits, is that documents containing mentions of Caterina in connection with Leonardo's family say nothing about her race.
However, other data supports the hypothesis that Leonardo's mother was not European. For example, tests from the Cheti Anthropological Institute in central Italy showed that the artist’s fingerprints exhibit Arab characteristics.
Additionally, various documents testify that Leonardo had many issues in inheriting from his father. These were much greater than is usually the case with illegitimate children and could correspond to the status of a child of slaves, at least on the mother's side.