May 2, 2007 — The woman behind Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa
painting was born in an old Florentine house that was no beauty, according to newly discovered archival documents.
Originally used as a workshop by wool artisans,
the house stood a few hundred feet from the Medieval bridge
Ponte Vecchio, in a dark alley known as Via Sguazza.
According to historian Giuseppe Pallanti, it
was right in Via Sguazza, where the woman Leonardo began
painting in 1503 was born, on June 15, 1479.
"It wasn't a really nice place to live. Rain
water and sewage stagnated just in front of the
house," Pallanti told Discovery News.
Humble Origins
The author of the book "Mona Lisa's Story,"
Pallanti has identified her as Lisa Gherardini, a
member of a minor noble family of
rural origins. She later married a wealthy
Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo.
Pallanti's 25-year investigation supports a claim
first made in 1550 by Giorgio Vasari. In his
work, "Lives of the Artists," the 16th-century
painter and art historian named Lisa Gherardini
Del Giocondo as the subject of the portrait.
One among many theories is that
Francesco Del Giocondo commissioned Leonardo for the
painting to mark his wife's second pregnancy when she was about 24.
"Mona Lisa did exist indeed. My new findings
reveal that she lived a very ordinary life,
always struggling to live in a decent house," Pallanti said.
Lisa's Historic Home
The historian found evidence of Mona Lisa's
birthplace in a 1480 tax declaration by
Giovanbattista Corbinelli, who owned the building in Via Sguazza.
"Corbinelli wrote that the previous year he had
turned two workshops used by wool artisans into
two small houses. He gave one to his nephew, and
rented the other to Anton Maria Gherardini and
Lucrezia Del Caccia for 16 fiorins per year," Pallanti said.
It was an expensive rent, the equivalent of a year's salary at that time.
According to Giuseppe Cacialli, who owns an
artisan workshop in Via Sguazza, Mona Lisa's place of birth still exists, but has been closed off for decades.
"I was born near this street, but I have never
seen that door open in the last 50 years," Cacialli told Discovery News.
The owner of several estates in the Chianti
countryside, the Gherardinis might have had a
rather difficult time in the years following their daughter's birth.
At a certain point, when the girl was 15, it appears that her parents became homeless and had to sub-rent the house of the
merchant Leonardo Busini in the Santa Croce quarter.
"With my great uneasiness I'm renting half of my
house to Anton Maria Gherardini, because
they have no house. We agreed that this
accommodation won't last more than three years,"
Busini wrote in another tax declaration found by Pallanti.