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Read this book and the world's most famous image will never look
the same again. For the world's greatest cultural icon still has
secrets to reveal - not the silly secrets that the 'Leonardo
loonies' continue to advance, but previously unknown facts about
the lives of Leonardo, his father, Lisa Gherardini, the subject of
the portrait, and her husband Francesco del Giocondo. From this
factual beginning we see how the painting metamorphosed into a
'universal picture' that became the prime vehicle for Leonardo's
prodigious knowledge of the human and natural worlds. We learn
about the new money of the ambitious merchant who married into the
old gentry of Lisa's family. We discover Lisa's life as a wife and
mother, her association with sexual scandals, and her later life in
a convent. We meet, for the first time, previously undiscovered
members of Leonardo's immediate family and discover new information
about his early life. The tiny hill town of Vinci is placed before
us, with its widespread poverty. We find out about the career and
possessions of his father, a notable lawyer in Florence. The
meaning of the portrait that resulted from these human
circumstances is vividly illuminated though Renaissance love poetry
and verses specifically dedicated to Leonardo. We come to
understand how Leonardo's sciences of optics, psychology, anatomy
and geology are embraced in his poetic science of art. Recent
scientific examinations of the painting disclose how it evolved to
assume its present appearance in Leonardo's experimental hands.
Above all, we cut through the suppositions and the myths to show
that the portrait is a product of real people in a real place at a
real time. This is the book that brings back a sense of reality
into the creation of the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo. And the
actual Mona Lisa, it turns out, is even more astonishing and
transcendent than the Mona Lisa of legend.
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