Said Bargandzhia

The mother of the world-famous artist and Renaissance figure Leonardo da Vinci could be a slave of oriental origin. Such a theory was put forward by Viacheslav Chirikba, Doctor of Philology, professor, a member of the Supreme Council of the World Abaza Congress, in his new book «The Mystery of Katerina. Who was the mother of Leonardo da Vinci».

«This hypothesis cut me to my soul, as I knew that in that era there was a large export of slaves to Italy from Abkhazia and Black Sea Cherkessia,» Chirikba told the WAC portal. «So this woman, the eastern slave Caterina, could well be a native of Abkhazia. This is one of the most probable versions».

The professor explained that he had collected factual material and thoughts on this topic for a long time. «I decided to put on paper all this and share it with other people. So the idea came to write a book,» he said.

The author noted that for many years he was interested in the personality of the «great genius of the Renaissance».

«I'm interested in «human» side of his genius: what kind of personality he was, what worried him, how he looked at various issues of life, politics, art, creativity, and in what relations he had with his era. All this and much more was and is of great interest to me,» Chirikba shared.

He also talked about the difficulties he faced, collecting material for the book.

«The difficulties are in the deficit of factual material about Leonardo's mother: two or three mentions, one or two brief documents, and that's all. The rest is circumstantial evidence, and extracting them from the mass of material and matching them in such a way that a more or less complete and reliable picture is obtained is not an easy task. I hope that I was able to implement it to some extent,» Chirikba added.

The author has worked on the book «The Mystery of Caterina. Who was the mother of Leonardo da Vinci» since 2015. The book was published in June this year, and in August was presented in Sukhum.

The publishing of the book became possible thanks to the support of Mussa Ekzekov, the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the World Abaza Congress.

The circulation of the book is 1500 copies; it can be purchased in Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Kazakh online stores.

Viacheslav Andreevich Chirikba is an Abkhazian linguist and politician, from October 11, 2011 to September 20, 2016, he held the post of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia. He has a doctorate in philology, title of professor; he is a full member of the Academy of Sciences of Abkhazia, an extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of the Republic of Abkhazia, the author of books and articles devoted to languages, history and mythology of the peoples of the Caucasus.