Is it the 'real' Mona Lisa ?

[Fern]

I don't go along with the opening of a tomb/s to satisfy people's curiosity. This time 'they' are hoping it is the 'real' Mona Lisa. It's one thing to come across a tomb or remains while excavating, its another to
deliberately vandalise it.vandalise it.

A centuries-old tomb was opened on Friday in a search for the remains of the woman with the enigmatic smile.

MONA LISA'S SMILE: Is the five-century hunt over? Looks like it might just be.
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Researchers opened a centuries-old Florence tomb on Friday in a search for remains that could confirm the identity of the woman whose enigmatic smile Leonardo da Vinci immortalised in the "Mona Lisa", one of the world's most famous paintings.

A round hole, just big enough for a person to wriggle through, was cut in the stone church floor above the family crypt of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, whose wife Lisa Gherardini is thought to have sat for the Renaissance master in the early 16th century.
Theories abound about who the real Mona Lisa was, but Silvano Vinceti, a writer and researcher who heads Italy's National Committee for the Promotion of Historic and Cultural Heritage, plans to test DNA in the bones in the dank space and try to match it with those of three women buried at a convent nearby.
Historians say Gherardini - whose married name 'Gioconda' is used in Italy to refer to the Mona Lisa - spent her last years at the Saint Orsola convent, a dilapidated building where the hunt for her bones began last year.
Vinceti believes one of the three could be Lisa Gherardini.
"For centuries, historians the world over have been coming up with various theories about who this enigmatic, mysterious woman could have been," he told journalists outside the Santissima Annunziata basilica in Florence.
Vinceti hopes some of the bones lying in the cramped underground room behind the Santissima Annunziata's main altar will belong to at least one blood relation of Leonardo's muse, probably her son Piero.
Once a DNA match is made, Vinceti says an image of Gherardini's face can be generated from the Saint Orsola skull and compared with the painting, the biggest attraction in the Louvre museum in Paris.
"When we find a match between mother and child - then we will have found the Mona Lisa," he said.
HALF SMILE
The painting, which draws millions of visitors each year, is famous for the sitter's mysterious half-smile. The Louvre says it was probably painted between 1503 and 1506.

stuff.co.nz

 

[Diwundrin]

Who cares enough to spend so much time, effort, and money on something that could only be of fleeting interest to those not obsessed with the painting?
Why exactly does the World have to know who the hell she was? She's dead. ..... but not forgotten.

She has undreamed of , almost immortal, fame. All due to the fact that she has acquired an air of mystery precisely because she is unknown.
Her face is her legacy to history, not her name, her deeds or her station in life. She could be anyone, and wondering who is what makes the painting intriguing.

Do we really want to know the probably boring details of her life and snuff out the 'magic'?

 

[That Guy]

 

[Michael.]

.

Lips that smile and eyes that shine are instantly recognised as the painting of the 'Mona Lisa'

It is without question the most famous painting in the world and over 6,000,000 people visit the Louvre every year

Leonardo was fascinated by the way light falls on curved surfaces. The gauzy veil, Mona Lisa's hair, the luminescence of her skin – all are created with layers of transparent colour,
each only a few molecules thick, making the lady's face appear to glow, and giving the painting an ethereal, almost magical quality.

He had perfected a painting technique called 'Sfumato' where brush strokes blended easily and there was no harsh outlines visible

It is believed he began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 and finished it shortly before he died in 1519

In 1550, Giorgio Vasari, the famous architect, painter, historian and writer, published the first edition of his monumental collection of biographies,
‘The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects’.

In the course of his monograph on Leonardo da Vinci, Vasari included a wonderfully descriptive paragraph about ‘Mona Lisa’, and its first sentence has become one of the most vital and examined few words
in all the literature concerning ‘Mona Lisa’. It is loaded with information, which until the earlier part of the 20th Century was the standard source on this subject:

The Mona Lisa also conveys a powerful sense of harmony both in her features and against the background, a result of da Vinci's understanding of anatomy and his ability to calculate perspective mathematically


Carbon dating may help to clear up some of the mystery surrounding this great painting.

I was fortunate to be able to see it in all its glory in the Lourve.
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