Leonardo da Vinci's mother was named Caterina, a document discovered in the State Archives of Florence reveals that she was a Circassian princess, daughter of Prince Yakob, who ruled one of the kingdoms on the highlands of the northern Caucasus mountains: after being kidnapped, probably by the Tartars, she was enslaved and sold back to the Venetians.

Professor Carlo Vecce, a philologist and Renaissance historian who teaches at the University of Naples "L'Orientale" reveals The details about the new identity of the mother of the Renaissance genius, who would therefore have been only half Italian.

Professor Vecce previewed to the international press his first novel, "Catherine's Smile. Leonardo's Mother." 'It is a docu-fiction based on a true story, where the names of the characters mentioned are the real ones, found in the manuscripts he consulted.' In the Florence Archives, signed by Leonardo's father, Piero da Vinci, a notary in the Florentine countryside, Professor Vecce unearthed the act of liberation of Caterina "filia Jacobi eius schiava seu serva de partibus Circassie." The deed dated November 2, 1452, about six months after Leonardo's birth, at the instance of the slave's owner, a certain Ginevra d'Antonio Redditi, wife of Donato di Filippo di Salvestro Nati.

Leonardo was Piero's firstborn but not Caterina's, because, Vecce explained on the basis of documents in the Florence State Archives, it appears that she had already been "impregnated" in 1450, turning out in fact to be a nursing wet nurse. Vecce also speculates that the notary Piero made love to Catherine in Palazzo Castellani, now home to the Museo Galileo, on the Florentine lungarni.

According to Carlo Vecce's reconstruction, the journey from the Caucasus mountains took Catherine with chains on her hands to Azov, ancient Tana, at the mouth of the Don River, from where she was then transported across the Black Sea to Constantinople in 1439. Here she passed into the hands of Venetian merchants, who moved her to the Venetian lagoon the following year, while in 1442 she arrived in Florence around the age of 15, where she was a servant and wet-nurse in the house of Ginevra. It was here that Caterina met Piero da Vinci, the notary with whom she conceived her illegitimate son born on April 15, 1452, in Anchiano, a small village in the town of Vinci.