`Real’ Mona Lisa bones found: Italian experts

Even if bone testing had determined that the remains were that of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of rich silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, it wouldn’t have answered the intriguing question of who posed for Leonardo. While the first eight were well conserved, carbon dating tests showed they were too old to be the Mona Lisa.

Archaeologists uncovered remains in a Florence tomb that could lead to the discovery of the real ‘Mona Lisa’.

Because no remains have been found of Gherardini’s relatives, any DNA comparison testing was impossible, the researchers said.

“I’m speaking of historical, anthropological and archeological analyses that have been carried out very rigorously”.

Not only that, but DNA samples would need to be taken from the bone fragments and compared with DNA extracted from the remains of two of her children.

Carbon testing on the bones of three women exhumed in Florence’s Sant’Orsola convent have been dated to the time of death of Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo.

The search began in 2011, and while no concrete evidence has been found linking this skeleton to that of Gherardini, or her to the painting itself, researchers are not giving up any time soon.

“Our biggest problem has been the fact that the fragments were very fragmented, very deteriorated”, said Giorgio Gruppioni, head of the forensic anthropology laboratory at Bologna.

Only wealthy women such as Gherardini, who were not nuns, were given special burials in the convent.

Head researcher Silvano Vinceti says there are few remains and no skull, which might have helped determine if the woman could have been Leonardo’s model for the portrait now in the Louvre museum in Paris.

Shepard Smith made the error when he introduced a segment about Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece that continues to puzzle researchers and art historians.

It has all the ingredients of a Dan Brown thriller – an ancient crypt, a collection of human bones, a passionate sleuth and Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting. Artists around the world have recreated their own versions of the Mona Lisa, including famous artists like Any Warhol and lesser known names like Jean-Michael Basquiat, reports Columbus Alive.