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| Surprise... I'm a man! |
The secret to the Mona Lisa 'smile' has just been cracked!
An expert has claimed that the model in the famous Mona Lisa painting was a man! For years art critics have been trying to figure out what it is that makes Leonardo da Vinci's painting so special , and now an expert claims not only was the model a man, but he was Da Vinci's lover too!
Up until now historians believed the model was a silk merchant's wife, Lisa Gheradini. But now Silvano Vincetti, chairman of the Italian national committee for cultural heritage, says this is untrue. He said the identity of one of the world's most iconic paintings was a young man called Gian Giacomo Caprotti, also known as Salai.
Salai and da Vinci worked together for 25 years and is believed to be the inspiration behind several of the Renaissance artist's works.
Mr Vincetti said the artist and his effeminate apprentice had an "ambiguous" relationship.The expert drew on several of da Vinci's works, including St John the Baptist and the Angel Incarnate, to highlight the similarities of the nose and mouth to that of the Mona Lisa.
He also backed up his claims with forensic evidence! At a seminar in Rome Vincenti said:
"Close examination of a high-quality digital copy of the portrait had revealed an L for Leonardo and an S for Salai."
The findings have been refuted by French art historians at the Louvre museum in Paris, where the Mona Lisa is one of the centre's star attractions. Experts at the Louvre say they checked the painting two times in 2004 and 2009 saying:
"No inscriptions, letters or numbers, were discovered during the tests."
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| Vincenti claims that a letter 'S' can been seen in Mona Lisa's left eye, a 'L' in the right eye |
Vincetti, who has never had access to the painting, countered that the experts in Paris were "really blind" and he even offered to come to the museum with his team to date test the paint of the letters to the rest of the canvas.
So far the famous museum has not accepted his offer, and I doubt they ever will!
