Could Leonardo da Vinci’s Art Contain Traces of the Artist’s DNA?
A skilled artist, scientist, architect, and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci has represented the ideal of the “Renaissance man” for centuries. Advancing an assortment of fields, from anatomy and botany to astronomy and aerodynamics, the Italian polymath left behind a legacy of iconic paintings, like the Mona Lisa, and thousands of pages of scholarship, both finished and unfinished.
Now, 500 years following his death, researchers from the Leonardo DNA Project are attempting to study the biological factors behind the artist’s achievements.
Reporting their results in a preprint paper published this month on bioRxiv, the researchers say that they have successfully sequenced human DNA from a handful of historical artifacts, including the Holy Child drawing that some scholars attribute to da Vinci. While the origin of this DNA is difficult to determine, the team says that some sequences could have come from da Vinci himself, representing a major milestone for biology and the fledgling field of arteomics.
“Even a tiny fingerprint on a page could contain cells to sequence,” said preprint coauthor and Leonardo DNA Project chair Jesse Ausubel, from The Rockefeller University in New York, according to a September press release. “Twenty-first century biology is moving the boundary between the unknowable and the unknown. Soon we may gain information about Leonardo and other historical figures once believed lost forever.”
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Da Vinci DNA?
Since 2015, the Leonardo DNA Project team has developed various techniques for sampling DNA from fragile artifacts, including artistic and academic works, without causing significant damage to the drawings and documents themselves.
Providing fodder for biological discovery and a foundation for arteomics, a developing discipline that authenticates and analyzes art with the tools of genetics, these techniques show that historical papers can hold biological traces over the course of centuries.
For the preprint, which is still awaiting peer review, researchers turned to light surface swabbing and an assortment of genetic analyses to recover Y-chromosome sequences from several artifacts associated with da Vinci.
Some sequences were related, and some could have belonged to the artist, though the team warns that this identification is tentative, as additional tests (possibly involving samples from da Vinci’s notebooks, burial site, and family tomb) are needed to definitively prove that the DNA belonged to him.
“Even if confirmed DNA matches with Leonardo are still ahead, success is now inevitable in the sense that a threshold has been crossed,” said Ausubel, according to a January press release. “The project has established a solid ‘scaffold,’ a reference framework for detecting ‘signatures’ on ancient artworks or documents using DNA or microbiomes. The knowledge and landmark techniques pioneered by the project can and surely will be applied to gain insights into other major historical figures.”
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Signatures of DNA on the Surface
In addition to the human DNA, the researchers found bacterial, fungal, floral, and faunal DNA on the artifacts studied, which also included letters from a family member of da Vinci and artworks from other artists from centuries ago, which were included in the study for the purpose of comparison. The researchers also found traces of viruses and parasites.
Statistical analysis determined that these traces differed across all of the artifacts based on their creation and conservation history. In fact, their materials, surroundings, and storage conditions shaped all of their surface biomes, with their distinctive biological signatures serving as archives of their travels and their treatment over time.
According to the team, future work could harness these types of traces to learn more about da Vinci and his life, offering important insights into his heritage, health, and physical attributes, including those traits that could have informed his artistry and academic accomplishments. For instance, the team hopes to discover whether da Vinci’s genes could have contributed to his exceptional vision, which was sharp enough to follow the flows of water over different surfaces and even the flaps of dragonfly wings.
“This is not just about the author of the world’s most famous painting,” Ausubel said in the September press release. “It’s a challenge to redefine the limits of historical knowledge and cultural heritage.”
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