Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who would have thought, left heirs. A recent study found 14 descendants of the Italian polymath's male line, located through the reconstruction of a family tree that dates back 690 years and 21 generations.
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Published this Tuesday, the 6th, the study was led by the founder of the Ideal Leonardo Da Vinci Museum, Alessandro Vezzosi, and the president of the Associazione Leonardo Da Vinci Heritage, Agnese Sabato, and expands on research published in 2016.
The idea is to be able to reconstruct the genetic profile of the genius.
“In 2016, we had already identified 35 living descendants of Leonardo, but they were more indirect, the result of parallel kinships also in the female line, as in the best-known case of director Franco Zeffirelli,” said Vezossi in an interview with Ansa.
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“But these were not people who gave us useful information about Leonardo’s DNA and, in particular, about the Y chromosome, which is transmitted to male descendants and remains almost unchanged for 25 generations.”
The authors say that Leonardo had at least 22 half-siblings, but no children. The work documents the continuous line, from father to son, of the Da Vinci family, a surname that would ultimately remain in the city of Vinci.
The study starts from 1331, with Michele, Leonardo's grandfather, while the artist, born in 1452, is from the sixth generation. The family line continues today, in a total of 21 generations and five family branches.
“They are aged between 1 and 85 and do not live in Vinci, but in nearby towns of Versilia, in Tuscany. They have normal jobs, with different jobs, such as geometers, artisans”, points out the Italian, without giving further details of who these men were. Now, the DNA of the 14 will be analyzed in the coming months to contribute to the international task force The Leonardo Da Vinci DNA Project, led by researcher Jesse Ausubel, from Rockefeller University of New York.
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