The newly identified relatives range in age from 1 to 85 years old.

The inventor may have been gay and was perhaps even thrown into jail for “sodomy” in 1476, though the case against him was later dismissed.

Leonardo never married or had children, and he therefore has no direct descendants. All told, Leonardo had an estimated 22 half-siblings, including 17 from his father’s multiple relationships, reports Duncan McCue for CBC Radio. The scientist and artist was born out of wedlock to Ser Piero, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a young peasant woman, in 1452. Narrowing down the list of Leonardo’s blood relatives is time-consuming, complicated work. (Genetic evidence could also help scientists determine if remains buried in Amboise, France, really belong to Leonardo.) If they succeed, write Vezzosi and Sabato in the study, the scholars hope to “explore the roots of genius” and see if some of the inventor’s physical quirks, such as his left-handedness and synesthesia, have a basis in his genetic code. Writing in the journal Human Evolutionearlier this month, researchers Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato revealed a reconstructed da Vinci family tree that spans 690 years and 21 generations, from 1331 to the present day, as George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo.Įventually, the team hopes to use its expanding genealogical map of da Vinci’s relatives to reconstruct his genome. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Phillips Exeter Academy, where he later returned to teach English before focusing his attention full time to writing.īrown is currently at work on a new book as well as the Columbia Pictures film version of his most recent novel.Fourteen people alive today can now boast a direct genetic link to the famed Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci, reports Italian wire service Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA). These themes eventually formed the backdrop for his books.

The son of a mathematics teacher and a church organist, Brown was raised on a prep school campus where he developed a fascination with the paradoxical interplay between science and religion. In 2005, Brown was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME Magazine, whose editors credited him with “keeping the publishing industry afloat renewed interest in Leonardo da Vinci and early Christian history spiking tourism to Paris and Rome a growing membership in secret societies the ire of Cardinals in Rome eight books denying the claims of the novel and seven guides to read along with it a flood of historical thrillers and a major motion picture franchise.” Brown’s novels are published in 52 languages around the world with 200 million copies in print. Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels, including The Da Vinci Code, which has become one of the best selling novels of all time as well as the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars.

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