The woman driven to suicide by the Da Vinci Code

A painter fascinated with best-selling conspiracy thriller The Da Vinci Code committed suicide after becoming convinced she was the subject of a real-life murder plot.

She suffered paranoid delusions that she and her family were in danger "because of the knowledge that she had" of Leonardo after working on an exhibition about his paintings.

Caroline, a graduate of the Wimbledon College of Art, worked for years as a costume designer for the English National Opera on productions including The Magic Flute and Medea, and later went freelance.

One of the visitors was Professor Rocco Sinisgalli, a Renaissance art specialist from the University of Rome, who struck up a conversation with Caroline and asked her if she could help him translate a book he was writing about the artist Leone Battista Alberti.

Prof Sinisgalli later dedicated a book on Vitruvian Man "To the painter Caroline Eldridge" and sent her parents a copy with a note saying Caroline "had always shown a deep interest in this particular drawing and in Leonardo himself".

Caroline, who had no history of mental illness other than a brief battle with anorexia as a teenager, had what her father described as a "paranoid attack" whilst in Rome, and he flew to Italy to bring her home.