Admin
Admin
عدد المساهمات : 1147
تاريخ التسجيل : 05/02/2013
 | | موضوع: Italian archaeologists close in on real 'Mona Lisa' السبت فبراير 23, 2013 9:53 pm | |
|  FLORENCE - Archaeologists on Tuesday unearthed a skeleton in a rare state of preservation in Florence in a crucial step towards unravelling the mystery of the identity of the woman with the most enigmatic smile in the world. Tuesday, July 24, 2012 Several bodies have been discovered in the hunt to find the mortal remains of Lisa Gherardini, the Florentine noblewoman widely believed to have served as the muse for Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa".
Silvano Vinceti, who heads up the team
of Italian archaeologists, said this latest discovery
in an abandoned convent was particularly exciting
-- though tests would still have to be carried out
to ascertain the identity of the remains.
"I'd say that we've got to the really exciting
part for researchers," said Vinceti,
who specialise in resolving art mysteries.
"The culmination of all our work where
we're getting close to answering the key question,
'will we or will we not find Lisa Gherardini's remains?'."
"Today we opened another tomb, with a complete skeleton
which is very important because in the first phase
of the research we did not find human remains,
they had been moved to another location," he said.
The team began digging up the convent's new cement
floor last year, after fresh documents confirmed that
Gherardini, the wife of rich Florentine silk merchant
Francesco del Giocondo, had lived in the convent
after her husband died and was looked after
by her two daughters who were nuns.
She was eventually interred there.
Del Giocondo is thought to have commissioned
the portrait from the Renaissance artist,
and though there is little proof, most art historians
agree that Lisa Gherardini served as
the primary model for the bewitching painting.
It was composed between 1503 and 1506
and now hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris.
Although the researchers had previously discovered
bits of bones and two sets of remains in the convent,
the latest skeleton to be unearthed is the best preserved,
crucially, with the skull intact.
It also lies close to the tiny nunnery's Franciscan altar,
thereby placing the grave in the right historic period.
The researchers will now send the remains off
for a series of tests to confirm they belong to Gherardini,
and hope to then reconstruct her face and compare
it with the facial features in the painting.
"Carbon-14 dating allows us to date the period,
and we have to find out whether the remains
date to the middle of the 16th century.
"We will then do tests to prove the age of the person
when they died: we know Gherardini died between
the age of 62 and 63," said Vinceti,
who is also chairman of the Italian national committee
for cultural heritage.
"Then comes the biggest test, the DNA
, because we have the mortal remains of her children...
and if it corresponds, we'll know these
remains belong to Mona Lisa's model," he said.
Her children are buried at the Santissima
Annunziata convent.
Once her identity has been confirmed,
the researchers will begin the two-month
process of reconstructing the skeleton's face.
"The fundamental features will be clear.
We have already tried it out with Dante Alighieri,
whose face we reconstructed. We'll be able to
leave hypothesis behind and really compare
the reconstructed face of the 'Mona Lisa' muse
and the face and the painting in the Louvre,
" he added.
The true identity of "Mona Lisa" and her intriguing
smile have intrigued art lovers around the world
for centuries, and the archaeologists working on
the digs say it is incredible to be this close
to revealing one of the world's best kept secrets.
"It's a great feeling, particularly because
here we're working on a really well-known character
-- an icon.
"It's a fantastic sensation to know I'm working on
something which will go down in history,"
said Giovanni Roncaglia, one of the
team's assistant archaeologists.
Vinceti has studied the portrait for years
and recently claimed to have found symbols
hidden in the portrait.
He believes that the Florence-born Renaissance
artist's male apprentice and possible lover
Salai was one of the inspirations for the picture,
but that Gherardini is the main star.
| |
|
