The XO Directory

According to German researchers, Lisa Gherardini - the wife of Giocondo, a Florentine merchant - is the woman who posed as Mona Lisa, the famous Leonardo da Vinci artwork. The evidence, according to academics at Heidelberg University, are scribbled notes in the margin of a 500-years-old book.

Many aficionados have long supposed La Gioconda, as she was also known, was the sitter, from comments made by Giorgio Vasari in 1550.

But Vasari's identification was made 50 years after Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa, and, the university said he was noted for elaborating the truth.

Now notes written by Agostino Vespucci, who knew Leonardo, found in the university library, confirm the sitter as Lisa del Giocondo.

"All doubts about the identity of the Mona Lisa have been eliminated by this discovery," Heidelberg library said.

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