Bones are Mona Lisa’s, historian claims
A team of experts has found human bone fragments in a Florence convent that they claim could belong to Lisa Gherardini, the 16th century Italian woman widely believed to be the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
Researchers found fragments of a femur, ankle and shinbone, but have failed to locate a skull, which they say would have allowed them to reconstruct the face of the woman with the enigmatic smile who sat for the world’s most famous painting.
The true identity of the woman in the Mona Lisa, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, is not known. Some experts argue that Leonardo did not stick to his model’s features and painted his own, while others believe that the portrait depicted a male lover of the artist.
More popular is the view that Leonardo produced the masterpiece when the Florence silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned him to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gherardini, in 1503.
Convinced by that version, Silvano Vinceti, an Italian art historian, began excavating skeletons buried at the convent of Saint Ursula in Florence in 2011, where two of Gherardini’s children were nuns and where she was likely to have been buried in 1542.
Bones from bodies were found in one tomb that archives show was likely to have been opened between 1521 and 1545.
Carbon dating revealed that bone fragments from one body matched the period in which Gherardini lived.
‘‘We would have been happier to have the skull, which may have been removed by a collector in the past,’’ Vinceti said.
The team also failed to match the DNA taken from the fragments.
Bones were found belonging to Gherardini’s sons and husband, but when the vault was opened they discovered that humidity had made those bones disintegrate over the centuries, making DNA extraction from them impossible.
Teeth remained, but Vinceti said that it was not possible to extract DNA from them at the moment. ‘‘It’s not over,’’ he declared. ‘‘If technology advances we may be able to get the DNA out of the teeth and thus prove the bones are Gherardini’s.’’
Mr Vinceti said that he was betting on the bones being the Mona Lisa, however.
‘‘I could be mistaken, but I believe it’s her: it’s a probability,’’ he said.
The Times