Florence tomb opened in hunt for Mona Lisa identity

Researchers have opened a centuries-old Florence tomb in a search for remains that could confirm the identity of the woman whose enigmatic smile Leonardo da Vinci immortalised in the “Mona Lisa“, one of the world’s most famous paintings.

A round hole, just big enough for a person to wriggle through, was cut in the stone church floor above the family crypt of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, whose wife, Lisa Gherardini, is thought to have sat for the Renaissance master in the early 16th century.

Theories abound about who the real Mona Lisa was, but Silvano Vinceti, a writer and researcher who heads Italy’s National Committee for the Promotion of Historic and Cultural Heritage, plans to test DNA in the bones in the dank space and try to match it with those of three women buried at a convent nearby. Vinceti believes one of the three could be Lisa Gherardini. Historians say Gherardini — whose married name ‘Gioconda’ is used in Italy to refer to the Mona Lisa — spent her last years at the Saint Orsola convent.