This fascinating story reveals the reason the orphaned Caterina di Meo Lippi and the successful notary, Ser Piero da Vinci couldn’t be together apart from the fact that they were much in love, the origin of Leonardo’s name and the secret message of the Mona Lisa.
“Leonardo left us no comment on the circumstances of his birth, but there is one tantalizing allusion in his notebooks to the favors that nature bestows upon a love child. “The man who has intercourse aggressively and uneasily will produce children who are irritable and untrustworthy,” he wrote, “but if the intercourse is done with great love and desire on both sides, the child will be of great intellect, witty, lively, and lovable.” One assumes, or at least hopes, that he considered himself in the latter category.” Extracted from Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.
Caterina and Ser Piero not only could not marry for the seemingly obvious reason that they belonged to different class of society. It was more of a lack of faith in the happy ending. But the question arose, as to whether there was any divine reason, too for all this?
The book is currently only available in Hungarian. English translation is in progress.