What if Leonardo da Vinci still lived today? Not for real, but in his descendants. This is assumed by scrolling through the new and more complete genealogical tree of the family of the great Italian scientist and artist, the result of decades of documentary research e published in the journal Human Evolution by Alessandro Vezzosi (founder of the Leonardo Ideal Museum) and Agnese Sabato (president of the Leonardo Heritage association).
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The document reconstructs 21 generations from father to son, from 1331 to today, and identifies well 14 currently living male descendants in direct line, of which 13 so far unknown: “In 2016 we had already identified 35 living descendants of Leonardo, but they were mostly indirect, the result of parallel relationships also in the female line, as in best known case of the director Franco Zeffirelli – Vezzosi explained to the Ansa news agency – So 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 “.
The turning point could now come from the new direct male descendants (deriving from his father Piero and his half-brother Domenico) and currently alive: “They are between the ages of 1 and 85, they live not really in Vinci, but in neighboring towns as far as Versilia and do common trades, such as the clerk, the surveyor, the craftsman “, Vezzosi added.
Their DNA will be analyzed in the coming months to contribute to the research of the international taskforce working on Leonardo da Vinci Dna Project, chaired by Jesse Ausubel (of Rockefeller University in New York) and supported by the Foundation Richard Lounsbery: the project involves the J. Craig Venter Institute of La Jolla, in California, and other high-profile universities and research centers, including the Department of Biology at the University of Florence, headed by David Caramelli.
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