An Important Post For Our Davide De Rosa

 Yesterday, the 16th of July, 2015, Davide De Rosa was appointed vice Chairman of the Europe Committee at the HKGC of Hong Kong, an influential and venerable institution founded in 1861 (http://www.chamber.org.hk/en/index.aspx).

Stephen Weatherseed was elected Chairman.

Davide, a native of Milan,and a Hong Kong resident since 2007 has a law degree from Insubria University in Como and a legal license to operate in England and Wales, as a solicitor. He is also a member of the ICC and the Dante Alighieri Society.

This years he has joined the Law Firm Gianni-Origoni-Grippo-Cappelli Partners in Hong Kong (http://www.gop.it)

B39 wishes all the best to Davide and to his family on his new appointment.

 

 

Can We Live Forever?

Years back I published a science-fiction novel with Mursia, in Italy. The title was ‘Black Hole’ One of the characters was the director of CERN in Geneva, an Italian professor. He was a bad character but he had been working hard on immortality and he announced his findings just a few minutes before launching the Large Hadron Collider at its maximum power. His dream of immortality was a materialistic one: having accepted the fact that the process of cells’ decay is unstoppable – while electrons seem to be immortal – he had the idea to ‘downloading’ all what we have loaded in our brains during our existence and implants it in the brains of newly-born babies. All our memories, the first sight of our mother’s eyes, the first cigarette, the first kiss…in so doing what constitutes our self, our ego, with the heavy mass of knowledge, sentiments, emotions and raw data, attached to it will be transferred into fresh brains.

This, by the way, would create the possibility of interstellar transmission without moving our body by loading frozen brains in spaceships and, on reaching a certain planet, a beam coming from Earth would transfer our individuality into them.

Well, well, in my book the hopes of the professor to build such new ‘Babel Tower’ were cruelly dashed because the powerful collisions in the LHC created a micro black hole which then expanded destroying the planet, or most of it.

For people who do not entertain religious hopes – or historical and literary hopes, which Denis Diderot was pursuing not believing in God – the race is still on to find immortality.

Or, at least, longevity, to prolong our lives to 120 or 150 years, a target that seems within reach because of the astounding progress made by medicine and biological sciences in the last century.

Alex Zhavoronkov, a 37 years old Baltimore-based CEO of InSilico Medicine, thinks he will live until 150. He has a master in biotechnology at John Hopkins University and he takes more than one hundred pills and supplements every day. He says: ‘The longer you live, the longer you will be able to live, since more promising biomedical technologies are developed in labs around the world every year.’

Peter Thiel, the 47 year old billionaire and co-founded PayPal is planning to reach the threshold of 120 years. He follows a special diet and takes human growth hormone every day. He is well aware that he is increasing his cancer risks but he hopes that within the next decade cancer will become curable. He invests part of his wealth into stem cells research and biotechnology companies.

Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author of the 2005 New York Times bestseller The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology heads a research team at google and is an adviser at Calico project. He is undergoing body scans regularly to check lipids accumulation into his vessels, gulping down 100 pills a day, including Q10, lutein and bilberry.

The singularity Kurzweil mentioned in his book will be the time when computers will match human creativity: around 2029, and the point when computers will be able to redesign themselves without human intervention by 2045, two years after the final handover of Hong Kong to China…

The quest of Kurzweil begun as a child, right after the loss of his father: an orchestra director and pianist. His original plan was to build billions of micro-robots which will be able to enter into his father’s grave and mine his DNA and other organic traces to rebuild him piece by piece, giving his beloved dad back to him. At 67 he is still pursuing that dream but in the meantime he is producing an avatar version of his dad, using all his documents he had kept in boxes, tapes showing him playing, notes and doodles he had left behind.

 

An image of Leonardo Da Vinci having Oriental eyes?

 The 125 cm bronze statue of David by Andrea del Verrocchio kept at the Bargello Museum in Florence was likely made between 1473 and 1475. It was commissioned by the Medici family and was placed at Palazzo Vecchio in 1476. It may represents a 20 years old Leonardo Da Vinci who had entered into Verrocchio’s workshop around 1470-72. We may notice here his facial features similar to those we see in Leonardo’s unfinished painting ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ kept at the Uffizi Museum in Florence.

This statue represents a youthful David, the future monarch of the Israelites, just after having cut the head of the slain giant Goliath. The symbolism of such representation was that Florence was like David, apparently young and weak but capable, with God’s help, of winning over stronger states.

 

A New Image Representing Leonardo Da Vinci or Marcantonio Raimondi?

The Daily Mail printed an exciting story few days ago about an article by Ross Duffin, a music professor at  Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, who had identified ‘what he believes to be a rare image of Leonardo da Vinci in a 500-year-old engraving. It was carved by Italian artist Marcantonio Raimondi in 1505, it shows da Vinci playing a lira da braccio – a European bowed string instrument of the Renaissance.’

They have also opened a window reprinting my theory about the Chinese roots of Leonardo, quoting once more an article by the South China Morning Post.

Here is the link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3108219/Is-Leonardo-da-Vinci-looked-like-500-year-old-engraving-claims-one-world-s-depictions-artist.html

‘This is serious and stands some chance of being right,’ said Leonardo’s scholar Martin Kemp, a professor emeritus of art history at Oxford University and one of the world’s greatest expert on Leonardo.

It is true that Leonardo Da Vinci left sketches for a theatrical representation of the Orpheus by Angelo Poliziano and was an accomplished musician and singer.

This xylography is not a unique copy, for instance the Albertina Museum in Vienna has another copy and certainly there more around and has belonged to the Cleveland Museum of Art since the 1930s. The figure has long thought to be the Greek mythological figure of Orpheus, even if Orpheus is always represented as a clean-shaven youth and playing the lyre. What I think is that this representation is probably unrelated to the myth of Orpheus and furthermore the two animals close to him were not enchanted by his singing and playing but are simply resting, the dog is actually scratching his head…

Marcantonio Raimondi was a famous engraver (S. Andrea in Argène, Bologna, 1480 – Bologna before 1534). He moved to Venice in 1506 where he reproduced, without permission, some painting of Albrecht Durer into prints and was duly sued by the German artist, who himself had copies sketches by Leonardo Da Vinci, pretending they were his own creations. Raimondi was in contact with all major artists of his time, including Raphael and having moved to Rome in 1510 it is highly possible that he had met Leonardo Da Vinci who was there after 1511.

The problem I see in accepting this engraving as a representation of Leonardo Da Vinci is the fact that Marcantonio Raimondi himself was sporting long curling hairs and a beard, more or less like the possible self-portrait of Leonardo at Windsor and therefore we may be dealing with his self-portrait rather than a portrait of Leonardo.

Here is Marcantonio Raimondi’s self portrait on the left and on the right a portrait made by another engraver:

 

 

Talk & Presentation of my book on Leonardo at HK PolyU at 8 PM on June the 3rd, 2015.

Talk and book presentation.

Date: Wednesday, June 03, 2015

Time: 8pm

Venue: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Room V322, 3/F, Block V, Jockey Club Innovation Tower

Organized by: Italian Cultural Institute / Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong  and Macau.

In collaboration with: Minor in European Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

FREE EVENT – Registration:
https://www.eventbrite.hk/e/leonardo-da-vinci-a-chinese-scholar-lost-in-renaissance-italy-free-event-tickets-17024994216Angelo Paratico presents his book “Leonardo da Vinci: A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy”.

 

After several years of research, Angelo Paratico reached an astonishing yet very logical conviction: Leonardo Da Vinci was the son of a Chinese slave, Caterina. Leonardo Da Vinci: A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy is the story of this historical investigation, which step by step reveals the mystery of Leonardo’s life as if it were a modern thriller.The discovery of new pieces of evidence in the state archives of Florence and the rereading of ancient documents from around the world, was a compelling process that brings to light what has been hidden from our eyes, in spite of the ten thousand pages of Leonardo’s notebooks in our possessions.New perspectives have emerged, which eventually explained the reasons for the oddities, omissions and reluctance that have accompanied Leonardo’s previous biographies. Caterina was very young when she was captured by Mongol raiders and then spirited out of China to Crimea, from where she was shipped to Venice’s slave market. She was then sold to the agent of a wealthy Florentine usurer, Ser Vanni, a client of Leonardo’s father. At that time, oriental slaves were a common sight all over Tuscany. Most were categorised as Tartars, a generic term used for all Eastern people under Mongol domination, including the Chinese.Even Ginevra Datini, the beloved daughter of the quintessential Renaissance merchant Francesco Datini (1335–1410), was born to a Tartar domestic slave, a young Mongolian lady named Lucia, who was working in the merchant’s house. This surprising fact would never have come to light without the fortuitous find, in the 19th Century, of a treasure trove of Datini’s letters hidden in a secret partition of his palace in Prato, close to Florence. The book analyses and discusses Leonardo’s oriental roots using all the evidence available: he was left handed and was in the habit of beginning his notebooks from the last page; he was a vegetarian; he had an almost Buddhist outlook on the world; his paintings show landscapes that are clearly derived from Chinese painters who had used them centuries earlier, etc. And the book proves – as Sigmund Freud in 1910 had already understood – that Leonardo’s painting of Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the most famous painting in the world, is actually the dreamlike image of Caterina, Leonardo’s Chinese mother. The only woman he ever loved.

Angelo Paratico is an Italian writer and historian. Born in 1955 he studied Chemistry, Classic History and Literature in Milan and then moved to Hong Kong in 1983 where he still lives with his family. He is the author of several books in Italian and English (http://angeloparatico.com)  free-lances with several newspapers and magazines, more recently with the South China Morning Post. He has spoken several times at RTHK Morning Coffee (Hong Kong’s Radio) with Phil Whelan discussing a variety of topics. He is the vice President of the Dante Alighieri Cultural Society and one of the two founders of the cultural platform and blog Beyond Thirty-Nine

(beyondthirtynine.com) where he writes posts and leads several cultural projects, including an upcoming film on the life of Fr Gaertano Nicosia.

 

Expo 2015

Spero di sbagliarmi e non vorrei passare per essere un gufo, ma è evidente che l’Expo si rivelerà un insuccesso, sia in termini di visitatori che in termini d’affari e d’immagine. L’invasione di turisti cinesi non si materializzerà perché il lavoro di canalizzazione di questo particolare turismo non è stato fatto in maniera organica da parte della Ambasciata d’Italia a Pechino e da tutti i nostri consolati sparsi per la Cina, nonché dagli uffici di turismo, dall’ICE, dalla Rai che ha creato un patetico website e via dicendo.

E’ stato tutto un fai da te disordinato, senza una regia centralizzata, senza un controllo rigoroso per contenere i costi e la corruzione; mi dicono che manca il personale che sappia dare indicazioni in inglese, molti degli obbiettivi ecologici iniziali sono stati accantonati e la cementificazione ha distrutto  terreno agricolo contraddicendo l’idea di base della esposizione. 

“Facile per te parlare, ora!” dirà qualcuno, eppure questo lo avevo già scritto in un articolo uscito sul Secolo d’Italia pubblicato mercoledì 12 Dicembre 2007 a pag. 9 e che s’intitolava “Milano copi Londra, non Shanghai.”

Iniziavo lamentando che il sindaco di Milano, Letizia Moratti, non avesse voluto incontrare il Dalai Lama in visita a Milano perché temeva l’ostilità cinese nell’assegnazione dell’Expo a Milano, e poi continuavo notando:

 

Crediamo, però, che le preoccupazioni della Moratti siano eccessive: la Cina non c’entra nulla. La decisione di assegnare l’Expo verrà presa da un ente inter-governativo francese, chiamato Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), una sorta di fossile dell’anteguerra, che ha la funzione di regolare la cadenza di certe manifestazioni espositive internazionali. L’Italia ne fa parte, pagando ogni anno la propria quota associativa.

A differenza di quanto accade per giochi olimpici o per i mondiali di calcio, il nome World Expo non è brevettato e ogni Paese, in teoria, potrebbe usarlo. Infatti nel 1964 gli Stati Uniti organizzarono una propria World Expo, a New York, senza richiedere la benedizione di Parigi. E non solo, a partire dal 2001, dopo che per due anni il Congresso aveva rifiutato di ratificare il pagamento dei contributi annuali alla BIE, il segretario di Stato Colin Powell sanzionò l’uscita definitiva del proprio Paese da questa pseudo organizzazione.

L’edizione del 2000 fu tenuta ad Hannover, in Germania e fu un fiasco clamoroso: arrivò a far notizia soprattutto per il fatto che la municipalità tedesca si ritrovò con un buco da 1 miliardo di dollari: avevano preventivato 40 milioni di spettatori, ma se ne presentarono soltanto 18 milioni. L’edizione del 2005 si svolse ad Aichi, in Giappone, non riuscite a trovarla sul mappamondo? Neppure noi. Quella del 2008 si terrà a Saragozza in Spagna. L’edizione del 2010, invece, è stata data a Shanghai. E sapete chi erano gli altri illustri concorrenti a quell’ambito traguardo? Yeosu, nella Corea del Sud e Queretaro in Messico. E, anche qui, comprendiamo tutte le difficoltà del lettore in materia di geografia. Yeosu, non doma, tornò all’assalto aggiudicandosi l’edizione speciale del 2012, battendo sul filo di lana Wroclaw e Tangeri. Non ne avete sentito parlare? Neppure noi. Ora, capiamo i motivi dell’interesse manifestato da Shanghai nell’accaparrarsi questa esibizione, un po’ meno quelli di Milano.

Questo genere di manifestazioni sono le tenaglie che usa il partito comunista cinese per rafforzare la propria presa sul potere: servono solo per fini propagandistici. Non a caso, già da qualche anno, ogni capo di Stato che passa per Shanghai, vien portato a vedere il progresso dei lavori per l’Expo 2010 e gli vengono promessi contratti per partecipare alla realizzazione degli impianti e per gli sviluppi successivi. Vedendo tutto quel fervore edilizio, alcuni statisti tornano a casa con l’idea che si tratti di qualche cosa di molto importante, pur non capendo bene di che si tratti. A questa regola non era sfuggito neppure Romano Prodi quando, nel settembre 2006, aveva visitato i padiglioni che stanno sorgendo lungo il fiume Huangpu e che, una volta completati, accoglieranno quei 70 milioni di visitatori che hanno già messo in preventivo.  Sappiamo che i milioni per i cinesi non sono assolutamente un problema, ma i soldi che non entreranno in cassa invece lo sono. E infatti le previsioni per la fiera di Shanghai parlano già di una perdita netta di circa 3 miliardi di dollari, ma con il 40 percento coperto dal governo e il resto da banche e sponsor privati, gli organizzatori possono dormire sonni tranquilli.

Questo genere di circhi hanno fatto il loro tempo, oggi non servono più a mostrare ciò che un Paese produce, perché per saperlo basta fare una ricerca in internet. Gli operatori di ciascun settore non ne hanno bisogno, mentre ai turisti non interessa girare per questi caravanserragli: per questo motivo votano con i propri piedi, disertandole. Questo può spiegare perché il numero dei visitatori è sempre al di sotto delle aspettative degli organizzatori e spiega perché, alla fine, il bilancio va scritto con l’inchiostro rosso e non con quello nero. Crediamo che Milano non ne abbia bisogno e che dovrebbe, piuttosto, prendere esempio da città come Londra e New York, non da Shanghai e da Yeosu. Il sindaco dovrebbe agevolare una trasformazione di Milano da centro industriale a centro per i servizi avanzati, impegnandosi a far funzionare bene i mezzi di trasporto, snellire la burocrazia, abbassare le tasse e pagare meglio chi lavora. Milano va sviluppata in senso culturale, artistico e dello stile di vita. Non servono più queste grandi fiere, nate nell’Ottocento per vellicare l’orgoglio nazionalistico del popolo: è meglio investire in risorse per rendere pulite e sicure le strade. Milano ha bisogno di essere guidata da un sindaco visionario, aperto alle nuove istanze civili che scuotono il mondo.

Questo è quanto scrivevo e che ancor oggi sottoscrivo. Uno dei maggiori problemi causati dall’Expo sarà l’utilizzo dei padiglioni a fine fiera, basta vedere cosa è successo a Saragozza e Hannover, dove si vedono dei paesaggi desolanti, dei veri e propri monumenti alla follia dei paesi ricchi che hanno soldi da buttare. Ripetiamolo: non è più tempo per questi circhi, oggi si viaggia, si comunica velocemente ed esistono una miriade di fiere specialistiche in tutto il mondo. Non serve a nulla concentrare in un posto dei capannoni dove si raccoglie di tutto e perciò nulla di preciso e sarebbe ora di smetterla con queste esposizioni che servono solo ad alimentare la vanitàdi uomini politici, di architetti e di sedicenti esperti di alimentazione.

Concludo con la speranza di aver scritto una gran quantità di fesserie, e che l’Expo 2015 si rivelerà un successo memorabile, che chiuderà in positivo, che rilancerà la nostra economia e che i capannoni si trasformeranno in centri di aggregazione sociale e culturale.

 

On turning sixty this day

I have moved my birthdate to December 31st in Facebook to avoid receiving an outpouring of meaningless greetings from mostly unknown friends but, unfortunately, I forgot to change it in Skype and then I could do nothing with my credit card, with Cathay Pacific, a chain of hotels and several more trolls-driven systems which are set to imitate human sentiments.

I remember a writer stating that all old men hide a boy inside themselves who is continually asking: ‘Ehi, what has happened to you?’  That is what more or less I feel today. How will I spend this day? Nulla dies sine linea, as Pliny the Elder recommended to his nephew. I’ll write a review of an Italian book which is quite challenging, since I do not like the author and his way of exposing history, also because he is going against some of my long held assumptions: it will be like grinding a granite stone and  will keep me busy; then I’ll see two friends who forgot that it is my birthday, this will give me pleasure to let them know it at the last moment.

I writer and a blunt friend from Milan writes to tell to look at the positive side of aging and appreciate that, in spite of all the dangers and risks, I am still alive. Yes, by Jove, it is! In fact we say that our factory guarantee expires at fifty . He is one month older than me and he adds that our vigour and experience are still more or less in balance – with experience getting more and more heavier by the day – and that we should use wisely the time ahead, ceasing to think to possess and immortal ego, not picking up useless quarrels and make use of the next twenty or something years before all the last neurons in my brain will go down the drain.

Indeed I find this a sound advice, I’ll take it!

 

 

 

 

 

Salvatore Giannella. Monument Men in Italy during WWII and Beyond.

Salvatore Giannella Operazione Salvataggio Chiarelettere, 2014

ISBN 978-88-6190-312-8. 

‘To wage a war in Italy is like fighting in a damned art museum!’ These were the words of General Mark W. Clark, the commander in chief of the Allies in Italy during WWII. Italian writer and journalist Salvatore Giannella place them the beginning of his latest book, while remembering the unsung heroes, men and women who, by putting their lives at risk, had saved thousands of works of art from certain destruction. To use a poetic image, losing them would have meant losing all the mornings of the world. In its essence this is a book dealing with the salvific power of beauty seen in all its aspects, not only referring to paintings, sculptures and old castles but also including ancient books and parchments.

Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering, both art buffs, used their influence to steal works of art from Italy well before the beginning of the war. Then, with Italy’s surrender in 1943, the stealing became more systematic and only thanks to the efforts of few good men wearing different uniforms, so many unique pieces were shielded from stealing and destruction. Men and women almost forgotten but who came back to life because of Giannella’s well documented and well written book. A book that deals not only with WWII but also with other wars and other times: like the saving of the treasures of the Prado Museum during the Spanish Civil War, or describing the mission of Paul Bucherer-Dietschi, who in 1975 founded an Afghan library in Switzerland and then created a foundation to save Afghan artistic treasures. Giannella ends with an appeal to save the treasure of Syria, where a ferocious obscurantism lead by people who are hostis humani generis – to use Tacitus’ famous expression – want to destroy our shared history and beauty.

The pages which have moved me most are those dedicated to a chapter hitherto unknown, at least to me: the saving, in 1944, of Sansepolcro – a town close to Arezzo – by a British Captain named Anthony Clarke, who was commanding an artillery unit. Like at Montacassino the Allies did not want to take risks and were ready to flatten entire cities whenever they suspected that German troops were hiding inside.

From a ridge overlooking the city, Captain Clarke had the target in sight and ordered some artillery shots to be fired to adjust the trajectory but then something emerged from his memory. Sansepolcro…where had he heard about it? He suddenly remembered: a book by Aldoux Huxley entitled Along the Road where the writer speaks of a walk he took between Arezzo and Sansepolcro, where he saw ‘the most beautiful painting of the world’ as he described it. It was Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection. Clarke, awestruck, ordered the cease-fire. Immediately they called him from the headquarters to enquire what has happened; he came up with the excuse that no enemies were in sight and before they could ask: “How could you be sure?” The telephone line was cut. He was risking court martial and, even worst, sending his comrades to death. Then he spotted an Italian boy coming in his direction and he asked him if there were Germans, the boy said: ‘No, they had left!’ The next day, with his men, he liberated Sansepolcro and not a single shot was fired. Clarke then went to see the Resurrection painted on a wall of the city palace, a magnificent two metres by two metres fresco, completed in 1465. He stood there transfixed: that masterpiece had been saved by his literary recollection, together with countless civilians. After the war he moved to Cape Town in South Africa, where he opened a bookshop but he returned once to Sansepolcro, where his contribution was partially aknowledged as he was given honorary citizenship and, after his death in 1981, a street was named after him. His diary was found and made public only in 2011.

Salvatore Giannella (1949) had been the director of several Italian magazines, like L’Europeo, Genius and Airone and writes regularly for several newspapers. He has written the script of several movies, like Odyssey in the Abyss dedicated to Vassilj Arkhipov, the submarine commander who during the Cuban crisis refused to fire his missiles, thus averting WWIII. He is the author of more than twenty books and contributes daily to his blog, Giannella Channel.

 

Caterina, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mother Died in His Arms, while in Milan.

There is a Caterina appearing 4 times in Leonardo Da Vinci notebooks. The two most important notes are:

16 July/Caterina came, 16 July 1493. [i]

Here Leonardo simply says Caterina came and, perhaps, as a sign of his inner turmoil he repeated twice the date 16 July. Leonardo was in Milan since 1482 and in other instances when a person entered his entourage he always said ‘to stay with me’.

The last entry for Caterina is about her death. Leonardo left a detailed list of the expenses for her funeral and interment. But was this lady really his mother? We are sure that the answer is yes and we can demonstrate it: a fact that several important biographers of Leonardo had overlooked. Pointing at the list of the expenses for her funeral they have been arguing that Leonardo should have spent more for his mother or express more deeply his grief. But they forget that even when dealing with his father’s death Leonardo behave in a similar, reserved and apparently detached, fashion. We should also note that the list of expenses for her funeral is very detailed, and nothing similar could be found for other members of Leonardo’s family and circle of friends. Sigmund Freud had pointed out that looking at the list we should read a sort of soothing effect on his subconscious.

Here Leonardo was writing ‘expenses for the morte (death) of Caterina, but he cancelled the word morte and he wrote over it socteratura which means entombment.

 

Expenses for Caterina’s death entombment

 

For 3 pounds of wax                      s.27

For the bier                                    s.  8

Pall over the bier                           s.12

Carriage and placing of a cross     s.  4

For the bearers                               s.  8

For 4 priests and 4 clerks              s.20

Bell, book, sponge,                         s. 2

For the gravediggers                    s.16

For the dean                                 s.  8

For the licence                              s.  1

                                                     ——

                                                     106

      

Doctor                                         s. 5

Sugar and candles                      s.12

———

                                                  123 s.[ii]

 

This list which appears in the Codex Foster –  under a receipt containing wax and lemon juice – includes expenses for a doctor, sugar, wax for the candles, bier with a cross, four priests and four altar boys, the bells, the grave diggers. People who don’t see in this Caterina the mother of Leonardo claim that the expenses were far too low for a mother. But 123 soldi were not a small amount at all, as Luca Beltrami had demonstrated in one of his essays.[iii] At that time, in Milan with 1 soldo you could buy one litre of wine or six eggs. The importance of this person should also be clear by the fact that Leonardo is summoning four priests to officiate at her funeral and, for a common servant, they were a bit too many.

A short note has emerged a few years ago in a document from the State Archives of Milan, written in Latin and dated 26 June 1494, concerning the death of a lady called Caterina from Florence.[iv]

In Die jovis 26 Iuniis P[orta] V[ercellina p[arochia] s[anctorum]. Naboris et Felicis. Chatarina de Florenzia annorum 60 a febre Ter[zan]a contr.a dupla iudicio m[agist].ri Concordi de Castrono – Decessit.

It says that on Thursday 26 June at the Parish of the Saints Nabore and Felix at Porta Vercellina, Caterina from Florence, 60 years old, died of malaria and then follow the name of the magistrate. Strangely for Milan the Tuscan spelling Chaterina instead of Caterina is maintained but perhaps Leonardo had provided documents she had carried, stating her identity with the Florentine’s spelling. Incidentally Leonardo was to receive a vineyard from Ludovico Sforza, with an official act dated 26 April 1499, right where the lady died, at Porta Vercellina and was probably close to Leonardo’s home.[v]

Caterina may have contracted malaria at the Padule di Fucecchio where it was endemic, if the diagnosis made by the doctor was correct.  There is no record of another Caterina from Florence dying in Milan from 1494 onward. Therefore we may conclude that this lucky archival find finally closes the case once and for all: she was indeed the mother of Leonardo Da Vinci.

The first to raise such possibility, that she was indeed Leonardo Da Vinci’s mother, had been the Russian novelist and visionary intellectual Dmitrij Sergeevič Merežkovskij[vi] in his 1900’s novel Resurrection of Gods. Leonardo Da Vinci a work of fiction. Sigmund Freud who had read and greatly appreciated Merežkovskij’s novel in 1910 wrote that: ‘This interpretation by the psychological novelist cannot be put to proof, but it can claim so much inner probability, and is so much in harmony with all that we otherwise know of Leonardo’s emotional activity, that I cannot refrain from accepting it as correct…What we have before us in the account of the costs of the funeral is the expression – distorted beyond recognition – of his mourning for his mother.’[vii]

According to Sigmund Freud, Leonardo Da Vinci was affected by ‘obsessional neurosis’ as it can also be gleaned in his notes about the death of his father of July 1504.[viii]

 

 

 

 

 

[i] A dì 16 di luglio Caterina venne a dì 16 di Luglio 1493 Foster III, f. 88r

[ii] Forster II 95. a.

[iii] Luca Beltrami  La madre di Leonardo Roma, 1921.

[iv] Day 26 of June Parish of Saints Narbore and Felix of Porta Vercellina Published for the first time on V. Arrighi, A. Bellinazzi E. Villata Leonardo da Vinci. La vera immagine Giunti, 2006. Archivio di Stato di Milano. Fondo Popolazione, parte antica., 79 (1491 – 1494).

[v] Archivio di Stato di Milano. Cart. 102, f.34.

[vi] Dmitrij Sergeevič Merežkovskij, one of the founders of symbolism, was born in St. Petersburg in 1866 and died in Paris in 1941.

[vii] Freud S. Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood New York, 1964, p.55

[viii] Angelo Paratico Leonardo Da Vinci. A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy Lascar Publishing, 2015.