Scientists extracted DNA from a possible Leonardo da Vinci drawing that may provide genetic links to one of the most storied humans to walk the Earth. In a not-yet-peer-reviewed paper posted Tuesday in a preprint database, researchers from the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project (LDVP) suggested that there may be connections between a chalk sketch titled Holy Child and materials thought to contain traces of members of the artist’s extended family.
As reported in Science, “The preprint concludes that Y chromosome sequences from the artwork and from a letter penned by a cousin of Leonardo both belong to a genetic grouping of people who share a common ancestor in Tuscany, where Leonardo was born.”
Many questions linger, starting with the drawing itself: Acquired by the late art dealer Fred Kline in the early 2000s, Holy Child has been attributed to Leonardo by some observers, though others contend it could have been by a student. Then there are biological matters that are anything but simple to establish and verify. A geneticist told Science that the findings related to Holy Child are “far from proof,” and another said “establishing unequivocal identity … is extremely complex.”
Part of that owes to a lack of any DNA previously known to have come from Leonardo. The original tomb holding his remains in France was damaged during the French Revolution, and he had no direct descendants. But S. Blair Hedges, a biologist not affiliated with LDVP who has worked on sampling DNA on medieval manuscripts, called the publication “a great paper. Cutting-edge stuff. They put together an impressive platform of approaches that the field can build on.”
As chronicled by Science, the LDVP is part of a recent movement toward “arteomics” that stands to help in the authentication of artworks by scientific means. The field “doesn’t just open a new window, it opens a whole new world,” said Stefan Simon, director of the Rathgen Research Laboratory at the National Museums in Berlin, who is not affiliated with the Leonardo project.
Jesse Ausubel, an environmental scientist at Rockefeller University who studied the diversity of marine life and the chair of LDVP, said, “It’s well known that Leonardo used his fingers along with his brushes while painting, so it could be possible to find cells of epidermis mixed with the colors.”
