Caterina di Meo Lippi

Caterina di Meo Lippi ( – July 1493) is commonly identified as the mother of Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about Caterina's life and she has been the subject of scholarly debate. While some scholars believe that Caterina was an Arab or Chinese slave, a book published by Martin Kemp and the archival researcher Giuseppe Pallanti says that Caterina was born in 1436 to a poor farmer, was orphaned at the age of 14 and gave birth to Leonardo da Vinci at the age of 16. According to the book Caterina later had five more children with a different man.

Biography According to the art historian Martin Kemp and the archival researcher Giuseppe Pallanti's book Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting, Caterina was born in 1436 to a poor farmer and became an orphan at age 14 after both of her parents died. She and her infant brother Papo moved into her grandmother's farmhouse in the hamlet of Mattoni, within a kilometre of Vinci. Vecce's evidence was a document signed by Leonardo's father a few months after he was born, in which a slave named Caterina was freed from her mistress. In response Kemp said "I still favour our 'rural' mother, who is a better fit, not least as the future wife of a local 'farmer. Kemp said that slaves who had converted to Christianity were commonly named Caterina and said that Francesco del Giocondo, who probably commissioned the Mona Lisa, traded two slaves named Caterina in one year.