The search may have ended for Mona Lisa’s bones

[AsahinaKimi]

Archaeologists may have found the remains of the plain yet enchanting woman Leonardo Da Vinci painted back in the early 1500’s.

Discovery News reports that archaeologists found the complete skeleton of Lisa Gherardini, the woman thought to be Da Vinci’s inspiration for the Mona Lisa, underneath the floor of an abandoned nunnery in Florence, Italy.

“The bones were found beneath the remains of an altar in the church of the now derelict Convent of St. Orsola,” Discovery News reports.

The search for Mona Lisa’s bones started a year ago, in an attempt to reconstruct her face and match it to the painting in the Louvre Museum in Paris, according to Reuters.

more..
http://blog.sfgate.com/hottopics/2012/07/19/the-search-may-have-ended-for-mona-lisa%E2%80%99s-bones/

[mopinko]

1. i find the fixation on this painting a little strange.

i am sure it says something about how humans perceive art, but i am not sure what it is.

[Nay]

4. Me, too. I like the painting and all, but I have always failed to understand the fixation. Could

it simply have something to do with some earlier version of "buzz" or some 18th- or 19th-century ad campaign? It's just mystifying.

I remember reading a 1970's end-of-civilization science fiction story in which an unnamed art museum was looted and the art destroyed, and at the end one little boy managed to rip off the piece of canvas that held Mona Lisa's smile to keep for himself. The writer obviously meant for the piece of art to represent civilization itself, and how even amidst total savagery, humans would always carry with them the seeds of civilization, etc. But the writer chose THAT painting.

Anyone have any ideas why that painting resonates like this?

[virgdem]

2. Were they smiling?

eom

[tclambert]

3. But did they ever find her eyebrows?