<p>A Hong Kong-based historian and novelist has claimed that the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting might be both a Chinese slave, and his mother.</p>.<p><br />Angelo Paratico has spent the last two years piecing documents together to connect the dots.</p>.<p><br />Paratico, in a non-fiction book titled "Leonardo Da Vinci: A Chinese scholar lost in Renaissance Italy", which he hopes to publish next year, traces ties between Da Vinci and the Far East, the South China Morning Post reported.</p>.<p><br />Paratico says he is "sure up to a point that Leonardo's mother was from the Orient, but to make her an oriental Chinese, we need to use a deductive method".</p>.<p><br />It is widely accepted that the artist's father was a notary but very little is known about his mother Caterina, with some believing she was a local peasant.</p>.<p><br />But Paratico claimed, "One wealthy client of Leonardo's father had a slave called Caterina. After 1452, Leonardo's date of birth, she disappeared from the documents. She was no longer working there."</p>.<p><br />Paratico believes Caterina was taken to Vinci, about 32 km from Florence, where she gave birth and the move was made because a relationship with a slave was seen as improper.</p>.<p><br />"During the Renaissance, countries like Italy and Spain were full of oriental slaves," he said.</p>.<p><br />Paratico also points to other indications of Chinese ancestry, "for instance, the fact he was writing with his left hand from left to right... and he was also a vegetarian, which was not common" among Europeans.</p>.<p><br />"Mona Lisa is probably a portrait of his mother, as Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist) said in 1910. On the back of Mona Lisa, there is a Chinese landscape and even her face looks Chinese," Paratico added.</p>.<p><br />Only DNA analysis, using samples from relatives buried in Florence, can solve the mystery, he said.<br /><br />Paratico also believes Macau's Ruins of St. Paul might have been inspired by a Da Vinci sketch. Researchers, however, are sceptical about Paratico's ideas.<br /><br />"I respect his theory and it's an interesting proposition, but I don't think that the facade was inspired by a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch," said Cesar Guillen Nunez, art historian at the Macau Ricci Institute.</p>
<p>A Hong Kong-based historian and novelist has claimed that the woman depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting might be both a Chinese slave, and his mother.</p>.<p><br />Angelo Paratico has spent the last two years piecing documents together to connect the dots.</p>.<p><br />Paratico, in a non-fiction book titled "Leonardo Da Vinci: A Chinese scholar lost in Renaissance Italy", which he hopes to publish next year, traces ties between Da Vinci and the Far East, the South China Morning Post reported.</p>.<p><br />Paratico says he is "sure up to a point that Leonardo's mother was from the Orient, but to make her an oriental Chinese, we need to use a deductive method".</p>.<p><br />It is widely accepted that the artist's father was a notary but very little is known about his mother Caterina, with some believing she was a local peasant.</p>.<p><br />But Paratico claimed, "One wealthy client of Leonardo's father had a slave called Caterina. After 1452, Leonardo's date of birth, she disappeared from the documents. She was no longer working there."</p>.<p><br />Paratico believes Caterina was taken to Vinci, about 32 km from Florence, where she gave birth and the move was made because a relationship with a slave was seen as improper.</p>.<p><br />"During the Renaissance, countries like Italy and Spain were full of oriental slaves," he said.</p>.<p><br />Paratico also points to other indications of Chinese ancestry, "for instance, the fact he was writing with his left hand from left to right... and he was also a vegetarian, which was not common" among Europeans.</p>.<p><br />"Mona Lisa is probably a portrait of his mother, as Sigmund Freud (an Austrian neurologist) said in 1910. On the back of Mona Lisa, there is a Chinese landscape and even her face looks Chinese," Paratico added.</p>.<p><br />Only DNA analysis, using samples from relatives buried in Florence, can solve the mystery, he said.<br /><br />Paratico also believes Macau's Ruins of St. Paul might have been inspired by a Da Vinci sketch. Researchers, however, are sceptical about Paratico's ideas.<br /><br />"I respect his theory and it's an interesting proposition, but I don't think that the facade was inspired by a Leonardo Da Vinci sketch," said Cesar Guillen Nunez, art historian at the Macau Ricci Institute.</p>