The Real Identity of the Mona Lisa

We’ve finally found out (for sure) the identity of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa:

Some suggested the master artist had amalgamated a variety of subjects to create his ideal woman, used his mother for a model, or even posed himself.

However, academics at Heidelberg University say scribbled notes in the margin of a book 500 years old are the evidence that proves the woman with the strange half-smile, whose portrait hangs in the Louvre in Paris, is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Giocondo, a Florentine merchant.

Many aficionados have long supposed La Gioconda, as she was also known, was the sitter, from comments made by Giorgio Vasari in 1550.

But Vasari’s identification was made 50 years after Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, and, the university said he was noted for elaborating the truth.

Now notes written by Agostino Vespucci, who knew Leonardo, found in the university library, confirm the sitter as Lisa del Giocondo.

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