27 April 2011
Last updated at 17:47 ET
The team will use a geo-radar device to search for remains
A team of researchers in Italy has begun a search for the tomb of a woman who may have been the model for Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa.
The team is using a special radar device at the convent in the city of Florence where it thinks the body of the woman, Lisa Gherardini, is buried.
It hopes to find skull fragments and to try to create a facial reconstruction.
The identity of the enigmatic Mona Lisa remains one of the great mysteries of the art world.
Carbon-dating
The BBC’s Duncan Kennedy in Rome says although she has one of the most recognisable faces and the most enigmatic of smiles, for five centuries nobody has really known who she is.
Gherardini has long been thought to be a model who posed for the picture, although some experts say the final portrait may be a composite of
Read More from the Article Source: Full Article
