Closer to finding the Mona Lisa’s skeleton

Italian art experts and archeologists are getting close to identifying the skeleton of the presumed sitter for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

It is generally believed that the model was Lisa Del Giocondo, wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco Del Giocondo, who died in Saint Ursula's convent in Florence in the mid-16th century. A skeleton exhumed in 2012 from the site of the convent will now undergo DNA testing, which will then be compared with the results of similar testing on the remains of Lisa Del Giocondo's son and husband, who were buried in a family tomb in the Santissima Annunziata church. Silvano Vinceti, the ‘art sleuth who has been pushing the project ahead, said,

The final phase is starting, the one that can't go wrong. We are hoping for a positive result.

The testing will take about four months. The decision to go ahead with DNA testing was taken after carbon-14 testing two of the three skeletons discovered in the Convent of Saint Ursula were found to be too old to be considered. However it was impossible to date the third skeleton for the lack of collagen in the bone, whereas testing on the other two was possible by using scrapings from their tooth enamel.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.