Rome, Dec. 8: Leonardo Da Vinci may have been an Arab, according to scientists who have studied a single, complete fingerprint found on one of his paintings.

The print, taken from the artist’s left index finger, was discovered after an exhaustive three-year trawl through his works by researchers at the University of Chieti.

Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist who led the team, said the central whorl of the fingerprint was a common pattern in West Asia. “Around 60 per cent of the West Asian population have the same structure,” he said. The revelation will give weight to the increasingly popular academic theory that Da Vinci’s mother, Caterina, was a slave who came to Tuscany from Istanbul.

Alessandro Vezzosi, an expert on the Renaissance genius and the director of the museum in his hometown of Vinci, said: “We have documents that suggest she was Oriental, at least from the Mediterranean area. “She was not a peasant of Vinci. Furthermore, her name was Caterina, which was very common among slaves in Tuscany at the time.”

Almost nothing is left of Da Vinci, or his family. After his death in 1519, his remains were dispersed in a series of religious wars. The discovery of the fingerprint came after three years of scrutinising 52 manuscripts and paintings attributed to the artist.

Using the latest spectral scanning technology, the team found more than 200 prints, but only one perfect specimen, on a painting called Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine.