Can Researchers Crack da Vinci’s DNA Code? Recently Discovered Relics Attributed to the Legendary Renaissance Man May Help

Ancient Origins

A team of Italian researchers claim that they have discovered two relics belonging to Leonardo da Vinci, which could them help in tracing the DNA of the legendary polymath whose work epitomized the Renaissance.

 A Discovery of Immense Historical Importance? Could These be Da Vinci’s Relics? The peculiar relics were spotted during a long-term genealogical study of da Vinci’s family. “I can’t yet disclose the nature of these relics. I can only say that both are historically associated with Leonardo da Vinci. One is an object, the other is organic material,” Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in Vinci, told Seeker. The significance of such a discovery – if the relics are authentic– would be of immense historical value, since there are no known traces left of the Italian genius.

According to the “mainstream” version of history, the remains of Leonardo da Vinci, who died in 1519 in France, were scattered before the 19th century. However, in 1863 a corpse and large skull were discovered at the church of Saint-Florentin, where da Vinci was initially buried. Unfortunately, the place was pillaged during religious conflicts back in the 16th century and was entirely ruined in 1808. However, a stone inscription reading LEO DUS VINC was uncovered near the corpse, hinting at da Vinci’s name.

Leonardo da Vinci's Tomb in Saint-Hubert Chapel (Amboise). (CC BY SA 3.0)

DNA Testing Dilemmas
The aforementioned bones, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, would be rediscovered in 1874 and reburied in the chapel of Saint-Hubert at the Château d'Amboise. What confuses things, however, is that researchers can’t get permission to conduct DNA testing and further analysis of the bones due to ethical reasons.

Ironically, another team of researchers seeking to unveil the true identity of the mysterious model who sat for Leonardo da Vinci’s world renowned painting, The Mona Lisa, had issues with DNA testing as well, but for different reasons. As Liz Leafloor reported in a previous Ancient Origins article, Italian archaeologists claim to own fragments of bone which they are certain belonged to Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo —the woman thought to have sat for da Vinci’s famous painting — but the remains cannot be DNA tested due to their decayed condition.

Mona Lisa, one of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous paintings. (Public Domain)

Researchers have tried studying the DNA of bone fragments which belonged to Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo —the woman thought to have sat for this painting — but the remains cannot be DNA tested due to their decayed condition.

On the other hand, historian Agnese Sabato and Alessandro Vezzosi, founders of an organization titled Leonardo da Vinci Heritage to safeguard and promote his legacy, have been searching for biological traces of da Vinci since 2000 without any particular success. “We pieced together an archive of hundreds of Leonardo’s fingerprints, hoping to get some biological material. At that time, cracking da Vinci’s DNA code was just a wild dream. Now it’s a real possibility,” Vezzosi tells Seeker.

An illustration of Leonardo da Vinci's presumed remains in Amboise, France. (Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci)

The Hunt for da Vinci’s DNA Will Continue for a Couple More Years
The research is part of a broader project to trace da Vinci’s DNA by 2019, in honor of the 500th anniversary of his death. “The hunt for Leonardo DNA can now rely on a good, well-referenced genealogy,” Sabato told Seeker, explaining that all of the direct descendants come from Leonardo’s father. The researchers will be in communication with many international universities in order to achieve the widest possible scientific investigation on the relics and da Vinci’s descendants. The plan is to conduct DNA analysis on the relics and compare it to da Vinci’s descendants and bones found in recently identified da Vinci family burials throughout Tuscany.

Leonardo da Vinci statue outside the Uffizi, Florence, by Luigi Pampaloni. (Public Domain)

The researchers know that none of this will be easy and there’s a good chance that they won’t be able to extract any usable DNA from the relics.

Despite the difficulties waiting for them ahead, they are optimistic, “We now have a solid Da Vinci genealogy. We also hope the organic relic yields enough usable DNA,” Vezzosi told Seeker and adds, “Whatever the case. This relic has an extraordinary historic importance. We hope we will be soon able to put it on display.”

Top Image: A representation of Leonardo da Vinci. (Deriv.) (CC BY SA) Background: Structure of DNA. (Public Domain Pictures)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

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Skull Model Shows Artistry, But Is It a Leonardo da Vinci?

By Megan Gannon

A researcher thinks this skull model is crafted from an agate-based mixture, or "mistioni," that Leonardo da Vinci was experimenting with in the early 16th century. Credit: Dr K Beckeer

A miniature skull model that a German couple bought in an antique shop three decades ago could be a 500-year-old lost work of art created by the original Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci, a new study claims. But some art historians are wary of the attribution.
About one-third the size of an adult human skull, the handcrafted cranium is missing a lower jaw and a cheekbone, but otherwise, the milky-white model is remarkable for its anatomical detail.
"It's like looking at a car: If you open the hood of a car, you see the quality of the car," Stefaan Missinne, an independent Belgian researcher based in Vienna, told Live Science. Missinne thinks the skull has that kind of under-the-hood quality, clearly made by someone with an intimate knowledge of anatomy.

Leonardo learned anatomy, sometimes by dissection, as a way to improve his drawings and paintings of the human form. But he didn't always get everything right. The great Italian artist clung to some medieval ideas about how the body worked, and Missinne thinks the skull and some of Leonardo's 15th-century anatomical drawings share the same errors, from the skewed sutures to the eye sockets that lead inside the cranium, like windows to the soul.

Leonardo da Vinci made anatomical drawings of the human skull in 1489. These sketches, acquired by English King Charles II, are now housed in Britain's Royal Collection in Windsor.
Credit: Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014

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Missinne also argues that the skull shares characteristics with the old men in Leonardo's so-called grotesque drawings, with its bulging forehead and hooked nose. Missing one tooth, the skull has an overall "scurrilous impression," Missinne wrote, perhaps intended to capture the ugliness of old age.
"It may well be that Leonardo, who was known to be melancholic, and seems, as early as 1500, to have been troubled as he got older by the loss of eyesight, as he writes he needs 'occhiali,' meaning glasses and by sorrow, used this miniature skull in his late years as his personal sorrow stone," Missinne wrote in his article published last month in the academic journal Wiener Medizinische Wochenzeitschrift.
Too good to be true?
It makes for a good story, but art historians contacted by Live Science were skeptical of the claims.
Missinne admits in his paper that some of the evidence he presents "may be interpreted as circumstantial." He dated the skull to around 1508, arguing that the presence of iridium in the skull model (revealed through a chemical analysis) suggests that it's not carved from a single stone like alabaster, but rather crafted from an agate-based mixture, or "mistioni," which Leonardo was experimenting with during this time. Missinne also found a mention of a detailed skull in the inventory of Salai, Leonardo's pupil. [Leonardo Da Vinci's 10 Best Ideas]
Michael Kwakkelstein, of the Dutch University Institute for Art History, said he examined the skull in the late 1990s after the owners approached him.
"Although I was impressed by the detailed rendering and anatomical knowledge this miniature skull displays, the problem remains that we cannot compare it to any authentic Leonardo sculpture for the simple reason that none of his works in sculpture have survived," Kwakkelstein wrote in an email.
Leonardo expert Martin Kemp, professor emeritus of the history of art at Oxford University, also said he became aware of this skull and the attempt to attribute it to Leonardo several years ago.
"I was not convinced then, and am even less convinced now," Kemp told Live Science in an email. He said he didn't believe Leonardo would have tried to make an anatomical model intentionally grotesque.

Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari wrote that Leonardo da Vinci was "so delighted when he saw curious heads, whether bearded or hairy, that he would follow anyone who had thus attracted his attention for a whole day, acquiring such a clear idea of him that when he went home he would draw the head as well as if the man had been present." Leonardo drew this caricature around 1495.
Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 84.GA.647

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"Whatever resemblances there are between the skull and Leonardo's drawings of skulls and sectioned skulls from 1489, these are overridden by the absence of the right zygomatic arch [cheek bone] and other asymmetrical deformations," Kemp said. "In his anatomical demonstrations, Leonardo specifically tries to avoid what he called 'monstrous' images."
Missinne argues that Leonardo wanted to know and learn why certain people had monstrous faces.
"Leonardo's interest in human nature, anatomy and any kind of freaky deformation, including facial ones is recorded and proven," Missinne told Live Science.
In the rare instances when works by Leonardo go on sale, they fetch exorbitant prices. In May 2013, Sotheby's brokered a deal to sell a recently attributed Leonardo painting of Christ known as "Salvator Mundi" for between $75 million and $80 million. In general, authentic Leonardo discoveries are uncommon — and often plagued by controversy — though apparently there is no shortage of claims.
"'New discoveries' of works by Leonardo are almost a weekly occurrence: they clutter my email box," one curator, who declined to comment on the paper, wrote in an email.
http://www.livescience.com/46351-skull-model-leonardo-da-vinci.html

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