Leonardo da Vinci was half Chinese: his Italian mother was a sham, and his true birth mother was a Chinese slave. Leonardo knew this, and that's why he painted the Mona Lisa with "a Chinese landscape" in the background and why "even her face looks Chinese." Yeah, we've really gone through the looking glass on this one.
It's the theory propagated by Hong Kong-based novelist-turned-historian (although that 'turned' is a bit contentious) Angelo Paratico in a forthcoming book entitled Leonardo Da Vinci: a Chinese scholar lost in Renaissance Italy.
In a recent interview with the South China Morning Post, Paratico says that 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." That is to say, there may be proof that da Vinci's mother was a slave (this is a fringe theory, but one that has been gaining legitimacy among historians) but there is no historical proof (just Paratico's deductions) that can make her Chinese.
Paratico asserts two different, but related and equally questionable theses: the first that da Vinci's mother was a Chinese slave, and the second that she is the Mona Lisa.
For the first point, Paratico says that da Vinci's left-handedness and vegetarianism is a sure give-away, as such habits were "not common" among Europeans. If there are any left-handed vegetarians reading this, congratulations, apparently you're Chinese.
As for the assertion that the Mona Lisa is da Vinci's mother (a proposition that was also suggested by Freud, who had the uncanny ability to say that anyone's greatest works were, in one way or another, a representation of their mother) Paratico doesn't elaborate in his SCMP interview, aside from noting that she "looks Chinese." Many historians agree that the painting's subject was a local wealthy woman named Lisa del Giocondo, but whether or not the Mona Lisa is Leo's mom is one question, while whether or not that mom was a Chinese slave is quite another.
While we haven't read Paratico's book (nor has anyone else: it's due out in 2015) our first instinct is to heap it into the pile with the collected works of Gavin Menzies, author of such texts as 1421, The Year China Discovered America, and 1432: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. He's also written about Atlantis, has a few websites solely devoted to debunking his historical hogwash, and happens to look quite a bit like Dick Cheney.
Menzies' books are pretty harmless historical fiction that tend to make decent sales at airport book stores, but happen to be written by someone who actually believes it, and it appears that Paratico has strapped his wagon to the Menzies crazy-train and is eager to see where it takes him.
Say what you want about Dan Brown, but at least he isn't giving interviews about how the da Vinci code historically accurate, if only you deduce hard enough.
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