UXUO

Beware! Another hoax is spreading fast.
Some Giuseppe Pallanti, a high school economics teacher from Florence who presumably spends his spare time writing books about the Mona Lisa and is most respectfully described as an “armature historian” had recently uncovered a death certificate that shows that a woman named Lisa Gherardini, died on July 15, 1542, in Florence and is buried in a convent in the center of the town. He also states she was a mother of five, plus a sixth who was adopted and lived near Basilica of San Lorenzo, which is near the Convent of St. Ursula, where supposedly she is buried. A story goes on and he also claims that one of her daughters became a nun and lived in that same convent. Pallanti said, that a husband of Lisa Gherardini in his will said that after his death, she would go and live with her daughter, and this fact eventually led him to search through documents there and discover her death certificate.
So far so good but how it relates to the world’s most famously enigmatic woman, Mona Lisa you ask.
Well, it seems Lisa Gherardini married a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo. In Italy the most famous painting of Leonardo is also known as “La Gioconda” but why?
The only link between the two comes from writings of Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist and biographer of Leonardo and other artists, who wrote that da Vinci once painted a portrait of del Giocondo’s wife. From there it sets in the tradition and historiography. No other evidence links the two together apart from the same Giuseppe Pallanti who mentions that del Giocondo was a neighbour and acquaintance of the artist’s father, Piero da Vinci.
Even a director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in his hometown of Vinci and a distinguished Leonardo expert
Alessandro Vezzosi, expressed much doubts questioning the statement that Lisa Gherardini is the woman depicted in the work that hangs in Paris’ Louvre Museum.
Indeed in one letter that Leonardo wrote to the Cardinal of Aragon in 1517 he hints that the Mona Lisa was probably a lover of the artist’s sponsor, the Florentine nobleman Giuliano de Medici.
Describing the painting Vasari noted the beautifully painted eyelashes and eyebrows in the portrait of Gherardini - something we do not find in the Leonardo’s most famous work. In addition Vasari himself had probably never seen the portrait and his account is contradicted by several early sources.
So the whole story would have been just another media hoax if it was not for one small detail. Together with the story MSNBC publishes a picture of two girls (see above) with the following description:

Natalia and Irina Strozzi Guicciardini, believed to be descendants of Mona Lisa Gherardini, pose for photographers in Florence on Friday.

From other sources we discover that 30 years old Natalia Strozzi works as an actress and her sister Irina, 25 years, has a degree in economy and they both live around Cusona, near Saint Gimignano (Siena), the same place which Tony Blair is frequenting with his family during his summer holidays. It also mentions that they are descendants of princess Girolamo Strozzi Guicciardini.
The aim is again to point to the existence of living descendants!
But the plot aims much deeper than it seems as it also exposes the connection to the famous Francesco Guicciardini!

It all might seem pretty appaling but I can’ fail mentioning that each and every article I read about this states at the end that:

Pallanti said the convent is not in good shape, and he has not tried to find the actual tomb.

I am not surprised they can not find the tomb - UXUO can not be found this way! Neither they will find the body and they are much too far from finding all real living descendants!

tags: francesco guicciardini, gherardini, gioconda, giorgio vasari, guicciardini, hoax, la gioconda, lisa, mona, mona lisa, pallanti, tony blair, uxuo, body, da vinci, descendants, living, living descendants