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Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa.’ Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Search begins for bones of likely Mona Lisa model

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf

Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa.’ Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa.’ Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
FLORENCE, Italy (AP) – Italian researchers have begun looking for the remains of a Renaissance woman many believed posed for the Mona Lisa.

The researchers used a geo-radar device Wednesday to search for underground tombs in a Florence convent where Lisa Gherardini is believed to be buried.

Tradition has long linked Gherardini, the wife of a silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, which is known in Italian as La Gioconda and in French as La Joconde. Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist and biographer of Leonardo, wrote that Leonardo painted a portrait of del Giocondo’s wife.

Gherardini is believed to have died in 1542.

Researcher Silvano Vinceti said excavations will begin next month.

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AP-WF-04-27-11 1344GMT