FLORENCE, ITALY – Italian experts are closing in on conclusive evidence of the identity of the sitter for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, one of the most iconic works in the history of art.
Art historians believe that model was Lisa Del Giocondo dé Gherardini, wife of Florentine merchant Francesco Del Giocondo, who died in a convent in the Tuscan capital in the mid-16th century.
Upcoming DNA tests on the “most significant” skeleton in a batch unearthed in the convent two years ago will provide clinching proof of her identity, the head of the project said last Friday.
Silvano Vinceti, an art sleuth tasked by Italy’s heritage committee, said the skeleton’s DNA would be compared with that about to be taken from the remains of Gherardini’s children, buried in a family tomb in Florence’s Santissima Annunziata church.
If there is a match, the woman immortalised by the Renaissance master, will be identified at last. Italians call the Mona Lisa ‘La Gioconda’ both because of her husband’s surname, De Giocondo, and because ‘gioconda’ in Italian means a “playful woman”.