- May 20, 2026
- By Karen Shih ’09
- Photo by Marguerite Mangin
FOR CENTURIES, authenticating a purported Vermeer or Pollock has largely relied on circumstantial evidence. Curators debated the fluidity and weight of brushstrokes, analyzed paint ingredients and carbon-dated canvasses, but could never fully erase doubts.
Now, a UMD researcher could change all that—starting with the original Renaissance man’s DNA.
Cell biology and molecular genetics Assistant Professor Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe and collaborators in the global Leonardo da Vinci Project (LDVP) posted a study earlier this year linking human genetic material they’d recovered from a disputed work by the 15th-century scientist and artist to letters penned by a relative.
Despite Leonardo’s fame and influence, fewer than 25 works are attributed to him, so any newly verified pieces would be momentous. Beyond that, such DNA research has the potential to transform the art world.
“There are so many questions in history that have not been answered,” says Gonzalez-Juarbe. With these “next-gen techniques to study art and cultural artifacts, we can understand history in a biological sense.”
Gonzalez-Juarbe is a microbiome expert, skilled at studying systems with low DNA abundance like the lungs. He was invited to join the LDVP to improve conservation efforts, finding and addressing microorganisms that could damage aging artwork. But when his team recovered human DNA, they realized they had a unique opportunity.
Gonzalez-Juarbe and colleagues gained access to the privately owned “Holy Child,” a palm-sized red chalk sketch of a young boy, believed to be drawn by da Vinci, then prepped for six months so they could extract the most DNA without damaging the art. On the day, Gonzalez-Juarbe was the only man allowed to take a sample to limit contamination of the Y chromosome they planned to sequence.
“It’s incredible to be a part of art history,” he says. “If you go to the Louvre, you stand in front of the ‘Mona Lisa,’ but you can’t touch it or do anything with it. Here I am, looking at this drawing raw, with no glass.”
For comparison, the team needed Leonardo’s DNA. But without access to his tomb, it turned to a set of letters penned by his father’s cousin in Tuscany. Those missives had enough genetic material in both the wax sealing’s thumbprint and the string tying them together.
The result: DNA from the sketch and the letters shared a Y chromosome profile, strongly suggesting a link.
To further establish provenance, the team hopes to test additional da Vinci notebooks and lesser-known pieces, as well as compare DNA from them to descendants tested at the University of Florence.
Following a buzzy piece in Science and other media coverage, requests are flooding in for the team to verify works by other historical giants. “Now that we have this framework, we can use it for anyone,” says Gonzale
(Photo by Norberto Gonzalez-Juarbe/J. Craig Venter Institute
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Spring 2026Types
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