Signora Da Vinci
Signora Da Vinci by Robin Maxwell:
SUMMARY
Caterina is the Signora da Vinci. She is Leonardo’s mother. She is the daughter of a well-educated man, Ernesto, Vinci’s apothecary. He had an alchemical laboratory, a medicinal garden and an apothecary shop where Caterina normally helped.
Caterina’s mom died when she was a baby. Caterina was raised by her dad and by her aunt. At the age of eight, his dad decided she was ready to start her education. Ernesto told Caterina that eight was the greatest of numbers because it was the number of Infinity: It had no beginning and no end. He said: “Eight is the number of endless possibility.” (p.8) That day Ernesto took Caterina to the third floor, a place where she was not allowed to go before. There she found two rooms. Caterina explained what she felt when she entered into the rooms. (p. 9) “When we entered I found myself in a bright, airy, but unadorned room. It was filled with tables, and the surface of every one of them was covered in books” There were dozens of hand-copied books, one manuscript, for example, was one thousand years old. Her father got to have those books and manuscripts because he worked for the Florentine historian and scholar: Poggio Bracciolini who also worked for Cosimo de Medici.
Cosimo wanted his people to know the ancient Greek and Roman writers and documents that were destroyed with the great library in Alexandria (Egypt. Many of these were hidden from the Christian church fathers, who thought them heretical.
Ernesto told her daughter that “What lied within the pages of those books were truths that they couldn’t allow to be lost to the World. Truths that had to be learned by her.” And Caterina did learn.
SUMMARY
Caterina is the Signora da Vinci. She is Leonardo’s mother. She is the daughter of a well-educated man, Ernesto, Vinci’s apothecary. He had an alchemical laboratory, a medicinal garden and an apothecary shop where Caterina normally helped.
Caterina’s mom died when she was a baby. Caterina was raised by her dad and by her aunt. At the age of eight, his dad decided she was ready to start her education. Ernesto told Caterina that eight was the greatest of numbers because it was the number of Infinity: It had no beginning and no end. He said: “Eight is the number of endless possibility.” (p.8) That day Ernesto took Caterina to the third floor, a place where she was not allowed to go before. There she found two rooms. Caterina explained what she felt when she entered into the rooms. (p. 9) “When we entered I found myself in a bright, airy, but unadorned room. It was filled with tables, and the surface of every one of them was covered in books” There were dozens of hand-copied books, one manuscript, for example, was one thousand years old. Her father got to have those books and manuscripts because he worked for the Florentine historian and scholar: Poggio Bracciolini who also worked for Cosimo de Medici.
Cosimo wanted his people to know the ancient Greek and Roman writers and documents that were destroyed with the great library in Alexandria (Egypt. Many of these were hidden from the Christian church fathers, who thought them heretical.
Ernesto told her daughter that “What lied within the pages of those books were truths that they couldn’t allow to be lost to the World. Truths that had to be learned by her.” And Caterina did learn.