There's not been much in the way of entertaining facts knocking about lately - again, I've had to resort to scraping the Google barrel. So, apropos of nothing:
The figure depicted in Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is Lisa del Giocondo.
Lisa lived from 1479 to 1542 in Florence, and was the wife of a silk and cloth merchant. Her life was an unassuming, fairly comfotable middle class affair, and she came to be da Vinci's model following a request from her husband. It is only in the last few years that she has been definitively identified as the person in the painting, and rumours still persist that the painting is in fact a self-portrait, as she bears a likeness to da Vinci. We've enough trouble with people poring over his Last Supper painting, so let's just not go there. The painting is known as La Gioconda in Leo's native Italian.
The Mona Lisa has only become the world's most famous painting in the last century. It's success is hard to explain, being as it is a basic portrait of an unknown person. It's an example of an otherwise ordinary individual being propelled into the heart of modern culture through their use in a portrait or picture. Slightly less highbrow versions of this occurrence include that bloke from the Arctic Monkeys album, and the girl scratching her arse whilst playing tennis.
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