Mona Lisa Found!
Italian historian, Giuseppe Pallanti believes he has located the grave of the woman who sat for Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, the Mona Lisa.
Pallanti identifies the woman behind the famous smile as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo. Lisa was the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant and it is believed that her husband commissioned the portrait to commemorate her second pregnancy at the age of 24. Pallanti's contemporary research supports claims made by the first art historian, Giorgio Vassari in his important text of 1550, Lives of the Artists.
Newly discovered documents verify that Leonardo's father was Lisa's neighbor. This link may seem trivial at first, but it provides solid evidence to connect la Gioconda's husband and Leonardo da Vinci. This new information (in the form of Lisa's husband's will) brings the pieces of the puzzle together. It also squelches theories that the Mona Lisa was a prostitute, the artist's mother, and even a feminized portrait of the artist himself. Yep, she was a real woman - and a woman with a grave!
Scientists plan to look for the real woman's remains, and possibly reconstruct facial features to see if the remains match the portrait.
2 comments:
This is all very historically interesting, especially to those interested in the life of Leonardo, but I sort of feel that "reconstructing facial features to see if the remains match the portrait" might be going a bit too far. This technique has become very popular on Discovery Channel-esque type documentaries. It has been tried on the possible remains of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt, neanderthals, and even biblical characters. It always seems extremely subjective. If the artist doing the reconstruction does not know the remains are thought to be Mona Lisa (or even that the remains are from Europe) then maybe, but otherwise that knowledge will undeniably influence the features of any reconstruction. Also, beyond the general shape of the head and some muscle reconstruction, most facial features cannot be dicerned by a person's bones - skin tone/complexion, hair color/line/length, eye color, chubby cheeks, shape of the ear and nose, etc. - and would be guesses at best.
I agree that the scientific reconstruction idea is cheesey, and probably made to appeal to the Discovery Channel audience. But at the same time, I find it completely astounding that the body of a woman who was painted so long ago has been found and (with a fair degree of confidence) linked with the artist.
Post a Comment