It’s Official: Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa Identified (Finally)
Posted by Kyle Designs on January 24, 2008
As long as we are on the topic of women and art, we now can assume that the Mona Lisa’s smile reflects amusement that it has taken 500 years to figure out her identity.
The woman in Leonardo da Vinci‘s Mona Lisa has been identified as Lisa del Giocondo who was the wife of Florentine businessman Francesco del Giocondo. The portrait was being painted in fall of 1503. Confirmation came as the result of a discovery in a Heidelberg University (Germany) manuscript. Notes were found in the margins of a book owned by a friend of Leonardo describing that da Vinci was working on a portrait of her.
Even though the painting, Portrait of Mona Lisa or La Joconde, is also known as La Gioconda in Italian, there was still enough speculation about other possible models or whether the image is just Leonardo’s “ideal” woman, that positive identification was never possible until now. The painting hangs at the Louvre Museum in Paris if you wish to see it.
Agostino Vespucci, who was a friend of Leonardo’s, had written in the margins of a book by philosopher Cicero that da Vinci was working on a portrait of del Giocondo, and he even dated his notes as being made in October of 1503. And this was actually discovered two years ago but not widely known until a German radio station aired a report about in last week! Why did it take so long to even report it?? Apparently, the mystery surrounding the Mona Lisa continues….
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