Italian princesses Natalia, left, and Irina Strozzi. Photo: GAMMA-RAPHO



Italian Princess Ancestor of 'Mona Lisa' Says Remains Should be Left in Peace



by Nick Squires



Natalia Guicciardini Strozzi, a member of one of Florence's oldest noble families, said that searching for and exhuming the remains of Lisa Gherardini was "a sacrilegious act".

Gherardini was the wife of a rich Florentine silk merchant and is believed by many art historians to have been the model for Leonardo da Vinci's best known painting, which today hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

A team of Italian researchers began the hunt for her skeleton beneath a convent in Florence, using ground-penetrating radar to search for evidence of old tombs.

They hope to find Gherardini's remains and to gather enough skull fragments to be able to reconstruct her face.

That would enable a comparison to be made with the Mona Lisa to determine once and for all whether Gherardini was the inspiration for the portrait – an objective that some scholars have said is far-fetched.

"My ancestor's remains should be left to rest in peace," said the princess, who is also an actress, winemaker and former ballerina.

"What difference would finding her remains make to the allure of Leonardo's painting? The attempt to find her bones seems to me an inappropriate and sacrilegious act."

The princess's family own an estate near San Gimignano, the Tuscan village known as the "medieval Manhattan" for the 72 stone towers built by competing families during the Middle Ages, of which 13 remain.

She is a descendant of two noble lines, the Strozzis and the Giucciardinis, and Niccolo Machiavelli worked as a secretary to one of her ancestors.