Researchers to unveil secret behind the "Mona Lisa" smile

Researchers to unveil secret behind the

PanARMENIAN.Net - Few paintings have been more viewed, more analyzed, studied and interpreted, than Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" otherwise known as "La Gioconda." Despite this, no one has come up with an explanation for that enigmatic smile, or a lot of other details in this painting that, despite all the ink and hot air expended on it, measures a mere 77 by 52 centimeters (about 30 by 21 inches), CNN reported.

In the frigid bowels of a derelict building in central Florence, Italy, that covers the ruins of an old Franciscan convent, a group of researchers is trying to nail down some of the elusive details of the woman featured in the iconic painting. It is here that old city records say the woman who posed for the painting, Lisa Gherardini, the second wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, was buried.

Silvano Vinceti is leading a team to exhume and identify Gherardini's remains. Those remains are wrapped in aluminum foil and packed into large Tupperware containers stacked in an old filing cabinet. Vinceti and his colleagues took them out, one by one, and eventually found one packet with what appeared to be skull fragments.

After piecing together Gherardini's skull fragments, researchers will be able to reconstruct her face, factoring in that she was probably in her early 20s when she posed for da Vinci.

Vinceti has no doubt that da Vinci was commissioned to paint a portrait of Gherardini, but he is not certain whether the painting that now hangs in the Louvre in Paris is of her, or just contains some of her features.

For starters, he says, that famous smile is not Gherardini's. Analysis of the "Mona Lisa" shows, he says, that "when Leonardo began painting the model in front of him, he did not draw that metaphysical, ironic, poignant, elusive smile, but rather he painted a person who was dark and depressed."

The smile, he believes, was added later, and probably belongs to da Vinci's longtime assistant (and rumored lover) Gian Giacomo Caprotti, whose distinct features appear in other works by da Vinci. Other art historians say the "Mona Lisa" is a surreptitious self-portrait.

It will be several months before DNA tests can be conducted and the reconstruction of Gherardini's face can be completed. And regardless of the results, Vinceti concedes that da Vinci is beyond comprehension: "This is the magic of a great genius who eludes classification, around whom remains a fog of mystery."

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