Five men living quietly in Tuscany have been confirmed as direct descendants of the father of one of history’s greatest minds — Leonardo da Vinci. The revelation comes after a team of Italian scientists and scholars traced the family line of the Renaissance master back nearly 700 years, unveiling a genealogical journey that begins in 1331, just before the Black Death swept through Italy.
This extraordinary discovery was made possible through DNA analysis of bone fragments recovered from the Vinci family tomb in the Church of Santa Croce. The fragments revealed genetic markers on the Y chromosome — passed from father to son — that match DNA found in the five living men.
Though unlikely to match Leonardo’s fame, each of the newly identified descendants appears to share a distinctive creative streak or technical curiosity reminiscent of their ancestor.
Dalmazio Vinci, 89, has long been fascinated with flight. He began by crafting model aeroplanes, eventually earning his pilot’s licence. He also built early go-karts in Italy and developed designs for aircraft propellers and ship refrigeration systems, though none were patented.
Mauro Vinci, 79, is a skilled artisan whose intricate tapestry work once adorned beds made for global figures, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reflecting on the news, he told Repubblica TV, “You investigate and investigate, and well, they figured it out — it’s a great satisfaction.”
Bruno Vinci, 81, a former metal mechanic, remembered that his family had always suspected a link to Leonardo. “My father and aunts were convinced of it. They spent years searching family manuscripts trying to prove it,” he recalled.
Giovanni Vinci, a retired engineering technician, said, “I’ve been asked countless times — often in jest — ‘Are you a descendant of Leonardo?’ It turns out, I am.”
The youngest of the five, 49-year-old Milko Vinci, shares more than just a surname. “I was born left-handed and wrote my first words backwards,” he said. “Ever since I was a child, I loved dismantling things to see how they worked. To say I’m just like Leonardo would be a bit much — but still.”
The breakthrough comes after years of collaborative work by historians, molecular biologists, and forensic anthropologists, tracing 21 generations and over 400 individuals in the da Vinci family tree. Despite having no children of his own, Leonardo had at least 22 half-siblings. The team believes they have identified 15 direct male-line descendants of Leonardo’s father.
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Fascinatingly, the research also raises the possibility that Leonardo’s mother, Caterina, may have been a slave trafficked from Eastern Europe — a theory that has drawn increasing attention in recent years.
Launched in 2016, the project has brought together major institutions from Italy and the United States, including The Rockefeller University. Its primary aim is to reconstruct Leonardo’s genetic profile by tracing the Y chromosome, which remains largely unchanged through generations.
Alessandro Vezzosi, one of the project’s lead researchers, explained, “Our aim is to use Leonardo’s DNA to explore the roots of his extraordinary talents — his visual acuity, creativity, and possibly even his health and the cause of his death.”
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Jesse H. Ausubel of The Rockefeller University, who wrote the preface to the project’s book and oversees the initiative, added: “Even a single fingerprint on a manuscript could contain enough cells to sequence. The frontiers of 21st-century biology are shifting. Soon, we may learn things about Leonardo and others once thought lost to time.”
