![]() We’ve chosen it because it marks the antithesis of our next exhibition Ghost Words: Reading the Past, an exploration of palimpsests – documents, often biblical texts, often 1000 years old or more, that were scraped clean and then written over. It’s sold over 100 million copies worldwide, was adapted into a Hollywood film starring Tom Hanks, and will be hitting the London stage in 2021. It’s a book about a coded message, with a preposterous view of academic research, a mangling of bible history, and has been called an attack on the Catholic church. On Tuesday 15 December the discussion will be on the 2003 mystery thriller, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Everyone is invited to join their guest author to discuss a really popular book, one that we all know and perhaps or perhaps not love. Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.The Really Popular Book Club is the new reading group hosted by Cambridge University Library. The duo has previously done DNA testing on a strand of hair believed to have come from Leonardo’s head. Sabato and Vezzosi also hope to contribute to the existing work of the Leonardo Da Vinci DNA Project, which aims to conclusively determine whether the artist’s remains are buried at Amboise Castle in France. Was his ability to record the rapid movements of birds and dragonflies in detailed sketches, for instance, an indication of unusually sharp vision? How does the family’s DNA help explain Leonardo’s synesthesia, left-handedness, and premature aging? Learning more about Leonardo’s DNA could help art historians better understand the man, both with regard to his health, and his artistic acumen. Photo courtesy of Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato. ![]() ![]() Researchers Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato with their Leonardo da Vinci Family tree. The ultimate goal is to recreate the artist’s genome sequence. “Comparing the Y chromosome of today’s male relatives with that of their ancestors in ancient and modern burial sites would both verify the uninterrupted family line and certify Leonardo’s own Y chromosome marker,” the paper explained. “They were not people who could give us useful information on Leonardo’s DNA and in particular on the Y-chromosome, which is transmitted to male descendants and remains almost unchanged for 25 generations,” Vezzosi told ANSA. Similar research from 2016 had already tracked down 35 living relatives, including film director Franco Zeffirelli. “Maybe for some of my work Leonardo turned in his grave-but for the rest I hope he is proud,” Vinci told the Evening Standard. There is also an artist, the 62-year-old Geovanni Vinci, who says his work has nothing in common with that of the famed Old Master. Leonardo da Vinci, Self-Portrait (1512–15). They include farmers, office workers, and an upholsterer. Their study, published in the journal Human Evolution, begins with Leonardo’s grandfather, Michele da Vinci, born in 1331 and the first to bear the family name, which was originally an indication of birthplace. Over the centuries, the family name transformed into a traditional patronymic surname.įollowing five branches of the family tree across 690 years, the descendants on the male line range from one to 85 years old, and are all descended from one of Piero’s other sons, Domenico. Hoping to learn more about the artist through his family, researchers Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Ideale Leonardo da Vinci Museum, and Agnese Sabato, president of the Leonardo da Vinci Heritage Foundation, have scoured genealogical records over 21 generations. While Leonardo himself had no children, he had 22 half-brothers, thanks to his rather prolific father, Piero. Historians dedicated to tracing Leonardo da Vinci’s family tree have uncovered 14 living relatives of the Renaissance great in a project that has been in the works for nearly a decade.
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