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Leonardo da Vinci’s son? |
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August 18, 2000
ROME (AP) - A Leonardo da Vinci scholar has raised the tantalizing possibility that the Renaissance master had an illegitimate son -- an idea in sharp contrast with the traditional perception of Leonardo as gay. If confirmed, "this theory would demolish a lot of commonplace ideas about Leonardo," Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of the Ideal Museum in the artist's hometown near Florence, said Thursday. According to the scholar, who mainly bases his hypothesis on a single letter, Leonardo would have been 17 when he had his son, Paulo. There was no speculation on the mother's identity. In the 1479 letter, Bologna's Prince Giovanni Bentivoglio wrote to Lorenzo the Magnificent, referring to a "Paulo of Leonardo da Vinci from Florence." In a village of about 1,000 souls in late 1400, "who else might this Leonardo, with contacts in Florence and so close to such big families, be?" asked Vezzosi. Leonardo apparently sent the then-10-year-old Paulo to Bologna to keep him from what the letter describes as "bad company," said Vezzosi. The document was first published eight years ago by another Leonardo scholar, Carlo Pedretti, but received no such interpretation. "Every boy around Leonardo was always considered a boyfriend," Vezzosi said, conceding, however, that a "single document does not give a 100-percent certainty." In other letters and in some sketches of women playing with children, Vezzosi saw what to him were suggestions that Leonardo had experienced fatherhood. Italy's other leading Leonardo scholars were not available for comment this week, the height of the country's vacation season. Leonardo, with no known progeny, had a reputation during his life and afterward of being homosexual. In 1476 he was tried for sodomy but acquitted. |