A Little Less Mystery In The World

Apparently German researchers have finally confirmed the identity of the Mona Lisa as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. While this had been speculated on prior to this, there was little or no evidence to corroborate the statement.

I really don’t know how I feel about this. I’m all for academic achievement and discovery and the news doesn’t lessen the immense impact the painting has had but there’s a fairly large part of me that is saddened by this news. It’s one less mystery in the world. One less speculative dream that inspires conversation and thought. Now all that is left is one more hardened fact, one more pillar of Science strengthened.

*sigh* I guess I’m just a dreamer and romantic at heart and always will be.

On a completely random aside, I must say that the name Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo just looks and sounds extremely cool to me. So I guess that redeems the news somewhat in my eyes.

4 thoughts on “A Little Less Mystery In The World

  1. Meh. That painting gets too much credit anyway. It doesn’t matter who she was, to the artist she probably represented a paycheck more than anything else. But as for the reason she’s smiling:”It is a visual representation of the idea of happiness suggested by the word “gioconda” in Italian. Leonardo made this notion of happiness the central motif of the portrait” On top of that she’s a woman of the 1500’s, married to a silk merchant and the mother of 5 kids by societies standards she’s more than fulfilled her role as a woman and is better off than most would be, hell I’d smile too.
    Or who knows maybe she’s DaVinci’s lover. Again I say “meh”

  2. I don’t have much to say to that.

    But on another note… I just noticed that none of the comments have nametags on them anymore. I must have broken them when I installed one of those plugins recently. Gonna have to look into that. Hrrm.

  3. Hrrm. It seems to be fixed…

    Looks like the problem was with my Gravatars widget and went away when I upgraded the plugin

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