Falling in love with Mona Lisa's smile

Mona Lisa became famous thanks to two great movies, the Da Vinci Code and Mona Lisa's smile. How much do you know about Leonardo's number one painting?

She was an enigmatic woman (Mona in Old Italian came from Madonna, Ma Donna, meaning My Lady, Madame) named Lisa Gherardini, who married Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo, a loth and silk merchant.

Like other Florentines of that time, Francesco's family members were art lovers, so he commissioned the painting as a present for Lisa to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea.

Leonardo called his work La Gioconda, which means happy or jovial, but it can also be read as a pun, referring to the  jocund one, the feminine form of Giocondo. Da Vinci loves tricks and questions, so he left us another unanswered question. The second option seems to be the most reasonable one, since during the past most of the people, referring to their full name, used not only their last name, but also the name of their hometown. 

A very good example is offered by Leonardo himself: his full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, but there is no last name. In fact, di ser Piero means son of sir Piero, and da Vinci means from Vinci, standing for the place his father was from. Vinci is a city located in the province of Florence, in Tuscany.

I am not going to focus on the painting, there are plenty of art guides which describe it in details- plus, to be honest,I am not an art lover, I prefer learning the stories, the legends or the traditions behind a painting. I think it's interesting to try to read artist's mind instead of discussing the techniques used to draw.

When I saw the Mona Lisa, at the Louvre Museum in Paris, I didn't care about colors, light and perspective- not to care at all it's probably wrong, I admit it-, but I was asking myself why he draw the woman's hands one on the other, rather than putting a ring on her finger. Good question. I went to read on the official guide and it said that Leonardo chose this gesture to depict Lisa as a faithful wife, but also as a virtuous woman.

The biography of this lady is not so clear, except for some facts we are able to read in books nowadays, like she established a personal relationship with the convent of Sant’Orsola in Florence.

One of her daughters, Marietta, was a nun and and became a respected member of the convent. When the Mona Lisa got ill, she took her to the there, where she died about for years later, in 1542. We know for sure this episode is real, since in 2005 some researchers found a death register at San Lorenzo. It stated that Lisa di Francesco del Giocondo died on 15 July 1542 and was buried in Sant’Orsola.

Researchers and scientists shift below the old pavement of the Convent looking for the remains. The dig moved into two internal chapels and there were unearthed two bone fragments and several nails. Could they belong to the Mona Lisa? Could they be of one of the nuns? The bone fragments, of course, have to be analyzed and the DNA will be compared to descendants of the family.

What we know for sure it's that centuries after Lisa's death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting, and due to to speculation by scholars and hobbyists, it was turned into a globally recognized icon and an object of commercialization.