The new da Vinci family tree reveals that 14 descendants are still alive

A new family tree could help scientists determine whether remains buried in a French church belong to the Italian artist.

Historians Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnes Sabato have spent more than a decade tracing the genealogy Leonardo Da Vinci. The map spans over 690 years, 21 generations and five family branches, the site says Live Science.

In the new study published July 4 in the scientific journal, human evolutionThe couple used historical archival documents, as well as living descendants’ accounts to trace the five branches of their family tree. According to historians, the Italian artist was part of the sixth generation of Da Vinci.

As the same site remembers, check out family history Da Vinci is difficult because only one of his parents can be properly traced. Leonardo da Vinci was born out of wedlock, the son of the Florentine lawyer Sir Piero da Vinci and a peasant woman named Caterina.

Previous research by Martin Kemp, an art historian at Oxford University, indicated that Caterina was, at the time of da Vinci’s birth, a 15-year-old orphan. At the age of five, the young man was transferred to the Italian city of Vinci (from where his family took his surname) to live with his grandparents.

When the Renaissance man died in 1519, he had no known children and his remains were eventually lost, meaning there was no reliable DNA to analyze. As a result, parts of their descendants became shrouded in mystery.

The artist was buried in the Church of Saint Florentine, France, which was in ruins after the French Revolution and was eventually demolished. Some say that a skeleton’s body was exhumed from the site and taken to nearby Saint-Hubert Church, but it is not known whether it really belonged to da Vinci or not.

The new family tree that began in 1331 with the family patriarch Michel, 14 living relatives revealed, male, with a variety of occupations, from office worker, pastry chef, blacksmith, upholsterer, Chinese salesman and artist.

Now, investigators want to determine if the remains of the French Church belonged to da Vinci, by comparing the Y chromosome in those bones with the same chromosome found by male relatives. This, according to the researchers, is because Y . chromosome It is passed down from father to son and remains virtually unchanged for up to 25 generations.

Moreover, finding bits of da Vinci’s genetic code can help art historians verify the authenticity of artworks and notes supposedly created by this Renaissance “genius” by comparing the DNA discovered with traces of DNA found in the pieces.