Was Leonardo the Son of a Slave?

Leonardo da Vinci is known to have been the illegitimate son of Piero da Vinci and a woman named Caterina. Evidence has emerged that Caterina was not a run-of-the-mill peasant girl, as was previously thought.

Now, 30-year-old research conducted by the late director of the Leonardo Library, published by his son Francesco, suggests a completely different scenario.

"Archival research has shown that there isn't any Caterina in Vinci or nearby villages that can be linked to Ser Piero. The only Caterina in Piero's life seems to be a slave girl who lived in the house of his wealthy friend Vanni di Niccolo di Ser Vanni," Cianchi wrote.

The claim is supported by recent research suggesting the Italian genius was of Arabic descent, following analysis of his fingerprint.

"It was common in Renaissance Florence to own slaves from the Middle East and the Balkans. At the time of Leonardo's birth there were more than 550 slaves in Florence, meaning that all the wealthy families had slaves in their houses. The girls were baptized and renamed. The most popular names were Maria, Marta and Caterina," Agnese Sabato said. [Link]

Genealogue Challenge #45

Tuesday was the anniversary of Shel Silverstein's birth.

When did his maternal grandfather die?

It's Henry!

Jane Walsh of the archives committee in Gloucester, Mass., did a search of the Web in 2004 to figure out why a 19th-century painter changed his name from Nathaniel Rogers Lane to Fitz Hugh Lane.

Up popped Lane’s request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane. Walsh and her committee comrades figured “Henry” must be a mistake, a typo maybe. Still, it was an error they came across with some frequency in Lane records. And so they visited the state archives in Boston to look at Lane’s actual petition.

“And sure enough, there it was: Nathaniel Rogers Lane writing in to ask if he could have his name changed to Fitz Henry Lane,” says co-chair Sarah Dunlap. They realized that Lane had always been Fitz Henry. Fitz Hugh was the error. [Link]

An article from last year gave a more vivid account of the discovery.

In Lane's own handwriting was a request to change his name to Fitz Henry Lane.

"It's Henry!" Dunlap recalls shouting in the archives room. [Link]

When news of the discovery spread, museums across the country had to relabel their Lane paintings. Some labels were not so easily changed.

One Prolific Painter

Art historians are trying to spot the face of Mary Alford in the works of Victorian painter William Powell Frith. Photographs of Mary—Frith's longtime mistress—were made public only yesterday.

An upmarket version of the picture book game Where's Wally? is to be found in checking masterpieces such as Derby Day and The Railway Station, using two grainy images of Mary which make their public debut today. One shows the dimpled, round-faced Mary on an undercover picnic with Frith; the second is a family group after the death of his first wife, when he finally made Mary what the Victorians called "a respectable woman".

The pictures have been revealed by an anonymous descendant of one of seven children Frith fathered illegitimately with Mary, while maintaining his official family, including another 12 children, a mile up the road. [Link]

Call Him 'Merisi da Milano'

Michelangelo Merisi was better known as "Caravaggio," the name of his hometown. Now the residents of that northern Italian town are dismayed to learn that the Late Renaissance painter was born in Milan, and baptized at the church of Santa Maria della Passarella.

Leafing through volumes of church records, Vittorio Pirami, a retired employee of Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest conglomerate, claimed a "special light" guided him to a page which records the baptism of Caravaggio.

"Today, the 30th, Michel Angelo, the son of Mr Fermo Merisi and Mrs Lucia Aratori, was baptised. Mr Francesco Sessa was present," read the Latin document.

Caravaggio's mayor says he can't understand why Milan would try to steal their most famous citizen.

"Perhaps they are lacking a famous 16th century artist to call their own," he said. "This is Italy, there is probably someone who has a birth certificate claiming Leonardo Da Vinci was also from Milan." [Link]

Surrealist DNA

Salvador Dali left no descendants, but forensic scientist Michael Rieders found the artist's DNA on a pair of nasal feeding tubes used during a 1984 hospitalization. They had been preserved by "two of Dali's closest friends."

"I'm not 100% sure why [they kept them]," said Dr Rieders, a toxicologist and lab director at NMS Labs in Willow Grove, Philadelphia, "but I now had an artefact that I was reasonably sure would contain some of Dali's DNA."

And why would a scientist want Dali's DNA? To test it for signs of genius (and/or madness), and to authenticate works attributed to him.

"We now have the art world very interested in using this Dali DNA reference as a way of looking to see if some of the other objects and artwork out there could perhaps be Dali's."

One piece in particular, a small watercolour called The Snail and the Angel, has a brown stain on it that is supposedly Dali's semen. The authenticity of that painting is not in doubt, but Dr Rieders thinks it would be a good place to start to try out the DNA fingerprint. [Link]

Pencil Artist Needs Tracing

Swiss-born Ferdinand Brader made his living as an itinerant artist, drawing pictures of Pennsylvania and Ohio farms in the 1880s and '90s in exchange for room and board. One of his drawings sold for $62,250 at auction, which would buy a considerable amount of room and board.

Brader’s meticulous graphite pencil representations of family farms in this area are both realistic and idealistic.

Men, women and children plow fields on horseback. Others tend to crops of vegetables and bales of hay. Brader also was known to draw himself (a la Alfred Hitchcock later) into his pictures, talking to the farm owner, sitting under a tree, or wherever else he might fit in. [Link]

I suppose I should mention the second part of the story, in case there are any genealogists reading this. No one knows what became of Brader. The article says that he was born in 1833 in Switzerland, and "spent at least some time at the former Portage County Infirmary, where he suffered from mental or physical problems, or both." No death record or gravestone has been found. Anyone care to take up the search?

Mona Lisa Found Dead in Florence

An Italian researcher says that he has discovered Mona Lisa's resting place in Florence.

Leonardo scholar Giuseppe Pallanti said documents indicate she was buried in the city's former Convent of St. Orsula in the heart of the city, ANSA said Thursday.

"I've pored through thousands of archive pages and I'm convinced the remains of Leonardo's model Lisa Gherardini was buried there," Pallanti said. [Link]

Pallanti produced evidence in 2004 that Leonardo's father knew Lisa's husband, and suggested that the painting had been commissioned by Ser Piero da Vinci himself because Leonardo "was hopelessly vague when it came to money matters."

Celebrity Rubbings

I really like artist Scott Covert's choice of medium, and his choice of subjects. He traveled more than 14,000 miles in less than a month to create celebrity headstone rubbings for his new show at the Craig Smith Gallery in Harbert, Michigan.

[M]any of Covert’s most popular paintings mix the names of dead celebrities who had only a tenuous connection in life. The pairings can be funny, poignant or just plain weird.

One of Covert’s personal favorites is a painting that combines the grave rubbings of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Kennedy family matriarch Rose Kennedy, who share a loose link through Cold War politics. A painting, called “Screaming with Laughter,” mingles names of dead comedians with famous murder victims. Another pairs red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy with the Three Stooges. [Link]

What's in a Name? Sometimes a Free Pig

A Danish artist is handing out free pigs and goats to Ugandan villagers. All they have to do is change their names to "Hornsleth."

The peculiar donation funded by Kristian von Hornsleth started in June this year when the Hornsleth Village Project Uganda 2006 was registered as a community-based organisation. The beneficiaries must be 18 years and above.

According to Kristian Hornsleth's website, the project is an exposure of the games donors play on the poor people they claim to help. It says donors claim they give free aid, yet they actually take something in return. [Link]

Aboriginal Artist Not So Aboriginal After All

From The New Zealand Herald:

Imposter finding guts artist

03.12.05
By Carroll Du Chateau

Two months ago, ex-pat New Zealander Sylvia Huege de Serville was enjoying the greatest success of her artistic career.

She had four works touring Australia as part of prestigious Aboriginal art awards, three in private Australian collections and a studio full of paintings about to be shipped to Melbourne for an exhibition. Then she found out she is an imposter.

[snip]

"My grandmother [...] told me she was Aborigine. Later my mother's cousin, who was raised by Wee Mum, verified it ... that's where it came from. We suspected she was one of the Stolen Generation who was taken away from her culture and ended up in New Zealand."

But a Tauranga cousin sent Huege de Serville first a birth certificate, then a copy of the family tree. To her dismay her great-great-grandfather, father of Wee Mum, was described as "Indian".

"My roots came from Bermuda ... It was like being slapped on the side of the head with a piece of 4 by 2."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

For American readers, a "4 by 2" is a 2 by 4 held sideways.