Mona Lisa history | Facts | Mona Lisa Secret | Mona Lisa picture

Who is the real Mona Lisa?

Lisa Gherardini

Giorgio Vasari identified the subject to be the wife of socially prominent Francesco del Giocondo, who was a silk merchant of Florence. Until recently, little was known about his third wife, Lisa Gherardini, except that she was born in 1479, raised at her family's Villa Vignamaggio in Tuscany and that she married del Giocondo in 1495.

Buy a Mona Lisa print here!

In 2004, the Italian scholar Giuseppe Pallanti published Monna Lisa, Mulier Ingenua (literally '"Mona Lisa: Real Woman", published in English under the title Mona Lisa Revealed: The True Identity of Leonardo's Model). The book gathered archival evidence in support of the traditional identification of the model as Lisa Gherardini. According to Pallanti, the evidence suggests that Leonardo's father was a friend of del Giocondo. "The portrait of Mona Lisa, done when Lisa Gherardini was aged about 24, was probably commissioned by Leonardo's father himself for his friends as he is known to have done on at least one other occasion."

Buy a Mona Lisa print here!

Pallanti discovered that Lisa and Francesco had five children and that she outlived her husband. In early 2007, Pallanti found a death notice in the archives of a Florence church that referred to "the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, deceased July 15, 1542, and buried at Sant'Orsola." Sant'Orsola is a convent in Florence. Pallanti ascertains with certainty that this refers to Gherardini. This would make her age at her death to be 63 years. Also in January 2007, Italian genealogist Domenico Savini identified the princesses Natalia and Irina Strozzi as living descendants of Lisa Gherardini.

Buy a Mona Lisa print here!

In September 2006, Bruno Mottin argued that the guarnelo he studied using the 2004 scan data suggested that the painting dated from around 1503 and commemorated the birth of Lisa Gherardini's second son.

Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait. She supports this theory with the results of a digital analysis of the facial features of Leonardo's face and that of the famous painting. When flipping a self-portrait drawing by Leonardo and then merging that with an image of the Mona Lisa using a computer, the features of the faces align perfectly. Critics of this theory suggest that the similarities are due to both portraits being painted by the same person using the same style. Additionally, the drawing on which she based the comparison may not be a self-portrait. Serge Bramly, in his biography of Leonardo, discusses the possibility that the portrait depicts the artist's mother Caterina. This would account for the resemblance between artist and subject observed by Dr. Schwartz, and would explain why Leonardo kept the portrait with him wherever he traveled, until his death.

Buy a Mona Lisa print here!

Isabella of Aragon, Raphael, Doria Pamphilj GalleryArt historians have also suggested the possibility that the Mona Lisa may only resemble Leonardo by accident: as an artist with a great interest in the human form, Leonardo would have spent a great deal of time studying and drawing the human face, and the face most often accessible to him was his own, making it likely that he would have the most experience with drawing his own features. The similarity in the features of the people depicted in paintings such as the Mona Lisa and St. John the Baptist may thus result from Leonardo's familiarity with his own facial features, causing him to draw other, less familiar faces in a similar light.

The art expert Dr. Henry Pulitzer suggested that the portrait was possibly that of Constanza d'Avalos, duchess of Francavilla, a patroness of Leonardo, and mistress of Giuliano de Medici. D'Avalos, coincidentally, was also nicknamed 'La Gioconda'.

Buy a Mona Lisa print here!

Maike Vogt-Lüerssen argues that the woman behind the famous smile is Isabella of Aragon, the Duchess of Milan. Leonardo was the court painter for the Duke of Milan for 11 years. The pattern on Mona Lisa's dark green dress, Vogt-Lüerssen believes, indicates that she was a member of the house of Sforza. Her theory is that the Mona Lisa was the first official portrait of the new Duchess of Milan, which requires that it was painted in spring or summer 1489 (and not 1503). This theory is allegedly supported by another portrait of Isabella of Aragon, painted by Raphael, (Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome).

Buy a Mona Lisa print here!