Write your abstract here. Da Vinci''s "Mona Lisa" Discovered to Have Died in 1542 and Buried in a
Convent.
Author
Giuseppe Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a church in
Florence that referred to "the wife of Francesco del Giocondo," the
famed Mona Lisa of Leonardo Da Vinci, "deceased July 15, 1542, and
buried at Sant''Orsola," the Italian press
reported Friday. Born Lisa Gherardini in May 1479, later to become known through the
ages as Da Vinci''s symbol of feminine mystique, she is thought to have
been the second wife of Del Giocondo, a wealthy silk merchant, with
whom she had five children. While intrigue has surrounded the identity of the woman in the
famous unsigned, undated Leonardo da Vinci painting housed at the
Louvre in Paris, Lisa Gherardini is widely accepted to have been the
subject. "It was in this
convent" Sant''Orsola, where she died at age 63, now
disused and in ruins, near the San Lorenzo basilica "that Mona Lisa
placed her youngest daughter Marietta, who later became a nun. And it
was there that Lisa, as stipulated in the will of her husband who died
four years before her, ended her life," Pallanti told the daily La Repubblica on Friday. Galaxy News Reported January 19th, 2007.
Pallanti, author of Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo''s Model, has spent nearly three decades combing Florence''s archives.