Caterina di Meo Lippi - Leonardo da Vinci's Mother

For me, Leonardo's The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is one of the most tender depictions of motherhood ever created.

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Leonardo was taken from his mother Caterina di Meo Lippi when he was very young and raised at his grandfather's house. Caterina was a penniless orphan and just 16 at the time of Leonardo's birth. She was seduced by a fancy and affluent 24-year-old notary from Florence - Ser Piero da Vinci, who was about to marry a daughter of a wealthy shoemaker. Caterina was then given a dowry and married off to a local farmer.

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Leonardo reconnected with his widowed mother about a year before her death, when she was in her sixties - there is a recording in his notebooks about her arrival: "Caterina came on the 16th day of July 1493"

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It appears that she lived with him briefly and that he supported her. He paid for her funeral. We don't know much else about their relationship. But I think his painting of the The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne speaks volumes.

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The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, c. 1503, oil on wood, Louvre