This is cut/paste because the link is reg req.
Italian scholar Giuseppe Pallanti claims in a new book to have identified Mona Lisa, the woman whose mysterious smile has intrigued art lovers ever
since Leonardo da Vinci painted her portrait 500 years ago.
Pallanti's book, Mona Lisa, Real Woman, says land registry records and other historical documents prove that she was Lisa Gherardini, born in
Florence in May 1479.
"I used nothing but archival records," Pallanti told AFP in an interview. "This is not a novel."
A recent blockbuster work of fiction, The Da Vinci Code, suggests Mona Lisa was Leonardo's disguised self-portrait. Another theory is that she never
existed at all.
But Pallanti said his research shows that she was, as his title asserts, a real person, who in 1495 married a wealthy Florentine silk merchant,
Francesco del Giocondo.
"When del Giocondo took Lisa Gherardini as his second wife, she moved up in the world," Pallanti said.
"Her husband supplied textiles to the Medici family," then the dominant force in Florentine politics and culture, he noted.
This is a better link,
www.corriere.it...
Interesting.
Sanc'.
