And now, Da Vinci’s Chinese code?

Is Mona Lisa Italy’s Sally Hemings? Not the African slavelover of an 18th century American President, but the Chinese serf-inamorata of a 16th century Italian merchant, and possibly the mother of Leonardo da Vinci?

This hypothesis by a Hong Kong-based art historian Angelo Paratico, based tenuously on the disappearance of a comely Oriental slave in Florence, would fit nicely with the Chinese belief that all important things originated (or had links with) the Middle Kingdom.

If indeed the world’s most inscrutable smile belongs to a Chinese odalisque called Caterina — also the name of da Vinci’s mother — rather than a middle class Florentine moglie called Lisa Gherardini, it would give China at least genetic ownership of the world’s most valuable painting.

British amateur historian Gavin Menzies had already averred in 2008, unsuccessfully, that da Vinci’s drawings were plagiarised from Chinese texts secretly imported to Venice, and that the Chinese discovered America 70 years before Columbus.

Paratico’s contention that the background and sitter’s face “look Chinese”, does not find much support either, and DNA evidence confirming Mona Lisa’s Italian roots cannot be ignored too. But then, nothing should come in the way of a good story — or a good movie too, with a break for an appropriately Chinese-Italian actress.