Searching for the real-life Mona Lisa in Florence

FLORENCE, ITALY – Italian archaeologists are searching for the remains of the real-life Mona Lisa. They have found two more skeletons. The two bodies were found under the basement of a former convent in Florence, Italy, on Tuesday.

The team believes Lisa Gherardini, said to be the model in Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous piece, is buried there.

Born in Florence and married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, Lisa Gherardini she was mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was considerably her senior.

“If everything goes as planned, we will find Gherardini and with her skull we will be able to reconstruct her face thanks to sophisticated, new technology,” said Silvano Vinceti, the head of the National Committee for The Promotion of Historic and Cultural Heritage.

The oil portait (exhibited at the Louvre in Paris, France) is believed to have been painted by Da Vinci between 1503 and 1506.