9781422277645

to a cowherd. Nothing more is known of her, though forty years later, Leonardo wrote about paying the funeral expenses of a woman called Caterina, who may have been his mother. Leonardo’s grandparents immediately took Leonardo into their care. Their son Francesco, who had never had a son himself, became so attached to Leonardo that he eventually left him a farm in his will. After a few years, Ser Piero realized that his wife, Donna Albiera, would bear him no children. Meanwhile, the young Leonardo was growing into a beautiful and promising child and so Ser Piero took his natural son into his family. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turkish Ottoman Empire marked the end of the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire). A wave of Byzantine refugees fled to western Europe, bringing with them ancient writings of Greek and Roman civilization that had been lost in the West for centuries. This influx of knowledge about astronomy, architecture, art, and philosophy inspired and drove a growing interest in scientific discovery.

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