Del Giocondo Lisa - Mona Lisa: a life discovered

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A LSO BY D IANNE H ALES

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Copyright 2014 by Dianne Hales

We thank the Bridgeman Art Library International for permission to use the Carta del Catena, 1490 from the Museo de Firenze Comera.

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Christopher Lin

Jacket images: Florence Italian School/ Getty Imges;

Mona Lisa, c.15036 (oil on panel), Vinci, Leonardo da (14521519) / Louvre, Paris, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hales, Dianne M.

Mona Lisa : a life discovered / Dianne Hales.

pagescm

1. Leonardo, da Vinci, 14521519. Mona Lisa. 2. Del Giocondo, Lisa Gherardini, 14791542. 3. Artists modelsItalyFlorenceBiography. 4. Florence (Italy)History14211737. I. Title.

ND623.L5A7 2014

759.5dc23

[B]2013042086

ISBN 978-1-4516-5896-5

ISBN 978-1-4516-5898-9 (ebook)

To Bob and Julia, who remind me every day that love is the greatest art

Where art and history meet, a story emerges.

GERT JAN VAN DER SMAN, LORENZO AND GIOVANNA

This book rests on the premise that the woman in the Mona Lisa is indeed the person identified in its earliest description: Lisa Gherardini, wife of the Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo.

The first time that I heard her namemany years after I first beheld Leonardos portrait in the LouvreI repeated the syllables out loud to listen to their sound: LEE-sah Ghair-ar-DEE-nee. Almost immediately the journalistic synapses in my brain sparked, and I felt a surge of curiosity about the woman everyone recognizes but hardly anyone knows.

On the trail of her story, I gathered facts wherever I could find them. I sought the help of authoritative experts in an array of fields, from art to history to sociology to womens studies. I delved into archives and read through a veritable library of scholarly articles and texts. And I relied on a reporters most timeless and trustworthy tool: shoe leather. In the course of extended visits over several years, I walked the streets and neighborhoods of Mona Lisas Florence, explored its museums and monuments, and came to knowand loveits skies and seasons.

Facts, I discovered on my journeys, grow fragile with time, especially when laced with the lore of Leonardo. Experts disagree about dates and documents. Aficionados endlessly debate almost everything. Self-styled detectives scurry after clues. Theories flourish and fade. Yet what we do know with any certainty about Leonardo reveals little about his world.

Great mengeniuses, leaders, saintsare poor mirrors because they rise too far above the common level, the historian Barbara Tuchman once observed. It is the smaller men, who belong more completely to the climate of their times, who can tell us most.

The real woman named Lisa Gherardinismall by historys measurelived amid rapid change, political strife, meteoric creativity, and economic booms and busts. At a new dawn for Western civilization, hers may have seemed an ordinary private existence, but at a distance of more than five centuries, its details create an extraordinary tapestry of Renaissance Florence, at once foreign and familiar.

Customs change, one of my wise consultants reminds me. Human nature does not. This book describes the customsthe clothing, the homes, the rituals, the routinesof Lisa Gherardinis life, but I also relate to her as a woman, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a matriarch, a fully dimensional human being not unlike her twenty-first-century counterparts. This is territory that skirts the realm of the probable and the possible, and I have tried to make the borders clear whenever I cross from confirmed fact to informed imagination.

A few additional notes: The symbol above, used to introduce parts of the book, is the giglio rosso, the red lily that has served as the heraldic emblem of Florence since the Middle Ages. Spelling remained arbitrary through centuries of Italians evolution. On the advice of linguistic scholars, I use modern Italian in the text, although I have kept the original spelling of names like Iacopo (Jacopo in contemporary Italian). I also identify places, such as the Palazzo Vecchio and Bargello, as they are called today rather than by older names.

Dates in histories of Florence, which began its new year on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, rather than January 1, are often confusing. I have relied on historical consensus whenever possible. A timeline appears ) provides additional background information, including a gallery of photos.

Most of Leonardos works, like many other Renaissance paintings, are unsigned, unnamed, and undated. Perhaps the only point about the Mona Lisa on which everyone agrees is that no one other than Leonardo could have created this masterpiece. And, I believe, no one other than the real Lisa Gherardini could have inspired it.

MONA LISA FAMILY TREE

S OURCE: Based on research, including recent unpublished findings, by Giuseppe Pallanti, author of La Vera Identit della Gioconda . Milan: Skira Editore, 2006.