Monalisa – who was the model?

Who was Mona Lisa? There has always been a speculation as to the identity of Mona Lisa. Who modeled for this famous painting that has fascinated millions! Now the art historians seem to have come to one person and established her identity!

Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting.

But art historians have often wondered whether the smiling woman may actually have been da Vinci’s lover, his mother or the artist himself.

Now experts at the Heidelberg University library say dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that Lisa del Giocondo was indeed the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world.

“All doubts about the identity of the Mona Lisa have been eliminated by a discovery by Dr. Armin Schlechter,” a manuscript expert, the library said in a statement on Monday.

The picture above
A 2007 handout photo shows a page from a book at the University of Heidelburg Library with a handwritten note on Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa portrait. German academics said January 14, 2008, they have helped to solve the centuries-long mystery behind the identity of the ‘Mona Lisa’ in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous sixteenth-century portrait. Experts at the Heidelberg University Library say dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503 confirm once and for all that Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, was the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world.

REUTERS/Image courtesy of the University of Heidelberg/Handout