Leonardo Da Vinci, believed to be of Italian origin, may have had an Arab heritage, according to Italian researchers who studied the Renaissance artist’s fingerprint found on one of his famous masterpieces.

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

"The central whorl of the fingerprint is a common pattern in the Middle East. Around 60% of the Middle Eastern population have the same structure," lead researcher Professor Luigi Capasso was quoted as saying.

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. "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," Alessandro Vezzosi, an expert on Da Vinci and the director of the museum in his hometown of Vinci, said.

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.

In fact, the discovery of the fingerprint came after three years of scrutinizing 52 manuscripts and paintings attributed to the artist.

Using the latest spectral scanning technology, the team found more than 200 prints, but only one specimen, on a painting called Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine. Da Vinci used his finger to smudge the necklace’s shadow in the painting, which is from the Czartoryski museum in the Polish city of Krakow.

"Not all the traces in the various documents were left by Da Vinci. Many of them belonged to his apprentices, or to people who handled the manuscripts. We are pleased that the fingerprint can be used to authenticate unknown works, or those we are unsure were carried out by the great genius," said Capasso.

Via Times of India