Several years ago during research on farms in Chianti, I was struck by the name of a particular owner, Antonmaria di Noldo Gherardini, which I had come across some time earlier in a book on the history of art. I remembered that he was the father of Monna Lisa and so I began searching through the historical archives of Florence for any information I could find on the Gherardini and del Giocondo families. I focused my investigation on three particular archives: Florence's Archivio di Stato, the Archivio dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) and the Archivio dell'Ospedale degli Innocenti.
I spent a long time in all three archives to be able to reconstruct the life of Lisa as a wife and mother, her husband's business dealings, the events that led to their marriage after the early death of Francesco's first wife, and the births of their many children. Among the most important
documents was, first, Francesco's will, which reveals his love for Monna Lisa, his beloved wife, and second, the notarial deeds signed between the del Giocondo family and the father of Leonardo da Vinci, who was an established notary in late-fifteenth-century Florence.
In line with the claim by Giorgio Vasari, the italian sixteenth-century artist and art historian, for centuries the painting known both as the Mona Lisa and La Gioconda has been considered the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the second wife of Francesco del Giocondo, but the theft of the painting in 1911 and the press campaign that followed resulted in that attribution being queried, and nourishing a debate that is still in progress.
In the wake of these events, historians debated the identity of the model. For some she was not Lisa Gherardini but another woman, or perhaps an imaginary one. Others have made other, audacious claims, for example, that it was actually a self-portrait of Leonardo in drag, supporting the notion of the artist's presumed homosexuality. However, the testimonies and documents collected here seem to clarify the question, making it difficult - as we shall see - not to side with Vasari's supporters and the thesis in favour of Mona Lisa.
