Did Leonardo paint himself as "Mona Lisa"?

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Did Leonardo paint himself as "Mona Lisa"?

This combination of images shows an undated self portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci, AP – This combination of images shows an undated self portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci, left, and the Mona Lisa. …

ROME – The legend of Leonardo da Vinci is shrouded in mystery: How did he die? Are the remains buried in a French chateau really those of the Renaissance master? Was the "Mona Lisa" a self-portrait in disguise?

A group of Italian scientists believes the key to solving those puzzles lies with the remains — and they say they are seeking permission from French authorities to dig up the body to conduct carbon and DNA testing.

If the skull is intact, the scientists can go to the heart of a question that has fascinated scholars and the public for centuries: the identity of the "Mona Lisa." Recreating a virtual and then physical reconstruction of Leonardo's face, they can compare it with the smiling face in the painting, experts involved in the project told The Associated Press.

"We don't know what we'll find if the tomb is opened, we could even just find grains and dust," says Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist who is participating in the project. "But if the remains are well kept, they are a biological archive that registers events in a person's life, and sometimes in their death."

The leader of the group, Silvano Vinceti, told the AP that he plans to press his case with the French officials in charge of the purported burial site at Amboise Castle early next week.

But the Italian enthusiasm may be premature.

In France, exhumation requires a long legal procedure, and precedent suggests it's likely to take even longer when it involves a person of great note such as Leonardo.

Jean-Louis Sureau, director of the medieval-era castle located in France's Loire Valley, said that once a formal request is made, a commission of experts would be set up. Any such request would then be discussed with the French Ministry of Culture, Sureau said.

Leonardo moved to France at the invitation of King Francis I, who named him "first painter to the king." He spent the last three years of his life there, and died in Cloux, near the monarch's summer retreat of Amboise, in 1519 at age 67.

The artist's original burial place, the palace church of Saint Florentine, was destroyed during the French Revolution and remains that are believed to be his were eventually reburied in the Saint-Hubert Chapel near the castle.

The tombstone says simply, "Leonardo da Vinci;" a notice at the site informs visitors they are the presumed remains of the artist, as do guidebooks.

"The Amboise tomb is a symbolic tomb; it's a big question mark," said Alessandro Vezzosi, the director of a museum dedicated to Leonardo in his Tuscan hometown of Vinci.

Vezzosi, who is not involved in the project, said that investigating the tomb could help identify the artist's bones with certainty and solve other questions, such as the cause of his death. He said he asked to open the tomb in 2004 to study the remains, but the Amboise Castle turned him down.

As for the latest Italian proposal, Vinceti says preliminary conversations took place several years ago and he plans to follow up with a request next week to set up a meeting to explain the project in detail. This would pave the way for a formal request, he said.

The group of 100 experts involved in the project, called the National Committee for Historical and Artistic Heritage, was created in 2003 with the aim of "solving the great enigmas of the past," said Vinceti, who has written books on art and literature.

Arguably the world's most famous painting, the "Mona Lisa" hangs in the Louvre in Paris, where it drew some 8.5 million visitors last year. Mystery has surrounded the identity of the painting's subject for centuries, with speculation ranging from the wife of a Florentine merchant to Leonardo's own mother.

That Leonardo intended the "Mona Lisa" as a self-portrait in disguise is a possibility that has intrigued and divided scholars. Theories have abounded: Some think that Leonardo's taste for pranks and riddles might have led him to conceal his own identity behind that baffling smile; others have speculated that, given Leonardo's presumed homosexuality, the painting hid an androgynous lover.

Some have used digital analysis to superimpose Leonardo's bearded self-portrait over the "Mona Lisa" to show how the facial features perfectly aligned.

If granted access to the grave site, the Italian experts plan to use a miniature camera and ground-penetrating radar — which produces images of an underground space using radar waves_ to confirm the presence of bones. The scientists would then exhume the remains and attempt to date the bones with carbon testing.

At the heart of the proposed study is the effort to ascertain whether the remains are actually Leonardo's, including with DNA testing.

Vezzosi questions the feasibility of a DNA comparison, saying he is unaware of any direct descendants of Leonardo or of tombs that could be attributed with certainty to the artist's close relatives.

Gruppioni said DNA extracted from the bones could also eventually be compared to DNA found elsewhere. For example, Leonardo is thought to have smudged colors on the canvas with his thumb, possibly using saliva, meaning DNA might be found on his paintings, though Gruppioni conceded this was a long shot.

Even in the absence of DNA testing, other tests could provide useful information, including whether the bones belonged to a man or woman, and whether the person died young or old.

"We can have various levels of probability in the attribution of the bones," Gruppioni said. "To have a very high probability, DNA testing is necessary."

The experts would also look for any pathology or other evidence of the cause of death. Tuberculosis or syphilis, for example, would leave significant traces in the bone structure, said Vinceti.

In the best-case scenario — that of a well-preserved skull — the group would take a CAT scan and reconstruct the face, said Francesco Mallegni, an anthropology professor who specializes in reconstructions and has recreated the faces of famous Italians, including Dante.

Even within the committee, experts are divided over the identity of the "Mona Lisa."

Vinceti believes that a tradition of considering the self-portrait to be not just a faithful imitation of one's features but a representation of one's spiritual identity may have resonated with Leonardo.

Vezzosi, the museum director, dismissed as "baseless and senseless" the idea that the "Mona Lisa" could be a self-portrait of Leonardo.

The painting is "like a mirror: Everybody starts from his own hypothesis or obsession and tries to find it there," Vezzosi said in a telephone interview.

He said most researchers believe the woman may have been either a concubine of the artist's sponsor, the Florentine nobleman Giuliano de Medici, or Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a rich silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo. The traditional view is that the name "Mona Lisa" comes from the silk merchant's wife, as well as its Italian name: "La Gioconda."

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A book about John Paul II

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The book was written by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the postulator, or main promoter, for John Paul's canonization cause and was released Tuesday. It was based on the testimony of the 114 witnesses and boxes of documentation Oder gathered on John Paul's life to support the case.

At a news conference Tuesday, Oder defended John Paul's practice of self-mortification, which some faithful use to remind them of the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

"It's an instrument of Christian perfection," Oder said, responding to questions about how such a practice could be condoned considering Catholic teaching holds that the human body is a gift from God.

In the book, Oder wrote that John Paul frequently denied himself food — especially during the holy season of Lent — and "frequently spent the night on the bare floor," messing up his bed in the morning so he wouldn't draw attention to his act of penitence.

"But it wasn't limited to this. As some members of his close entourage in Poland and in the Vatican were able to hear with their own ears, John Paul flagellated himself. In his armoire, amid all the vestments and hanging on a hanger, was a belt which he used as a whip and which he always brought to Castel Gandolfo," the papal retreat where John Paul vacationed each summer.

While there had long been rumors that John Paul practiced self-mortification, the book provides the first confirmation and concludes John Paul did so as an example of his faith.

Fast-track
Pope Benedict XVI put John Paul on the fast-track for possible sainthood weeks after his April 2, 2005 death by waiving the customary five-year waiting period before the process can begin. Last month, Benedict moved John Paul a step closer to possible beatification — the first major milestone in the process — by approving a decree on his "heroic virtues."

The Vatican must now confirm that a miracle attributed to John Paul's intercession occurred in order for him to be beatified — a step which many Vatican watchers have suggested may come as early as October.

Oder declined to speculate on any possible date, saying the miracle must still be confirmed.

The book publishes for the first time a never-delivered speech John Paul prepared for his weekly general audience Oct. 21, 1981, five months after the Turkish gunman, Ali Agca, shot him in St. Peter's Square.

Agca served a 19-year sentence in an Italian prison for shooting the pope, and earlier this month was released from a Turkish jail where he served a 10-year sentence for killing a Turkish journalist in 1979.

John Paul had publicly forgiven Agca on May 17, 1981 — four days after the assassination attempt. And he visited Agca in prison in 1983.

But five months after the attack, John Paul prepared a lengthy treatise on the power of forgiveness and the need for it in society, using his own experience as an example.

"The act of forgiveness is the first and fundamental condition so that we aren't divided and placed one against another like enemies," he wrote in what Oder called "an open letter" to Agca.

In the speech, he revealed that he while he had publicly forgiven Agca on May 17, "the possibility of pronouncing it before — in the ambulance that brought me from the Vatican to the Gemelli hospital where the first and decisive surgery was performed — I consider the fruit of a particular grace given to me by Jesus."

Oder speculates that John Paul decided against delivering the speech "out of prudence" for the ongoing criminal investigation into the shooting.

The book also reports for the first time that John Paul initially thought that the shooter had been a member of the Red Brigades, the radical leftist group that terrorized Italy in the 1970s and 80s. Some time before the shooting, the Italian secret service had reported to the Vatican a plot by the Red Brigades to kidnap the pope, the book said.

John Paul was apparently thinking of this when he told his secretary in the ambulance going to the hospital: "Just like Bachelet," an apparent reference to the assassination by the Red Brigades of the Catholic judge Vittorio Bachelet one year earlier, the book said.

Criteria for retirement
The book also reports that John Paul first considered the possibility of resigning when he turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops, going so far as to convene a group of close collaborators for an informal discussion on the topic.

He tasked then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's orthodoxy office and future Pope Benedict XVI, to study the theological and historic issues implied in having an "emeritus pope."

In the end, John Paul left the question up to "providence" — he never resigned.

But he did outline on two separate occasions the criteria for which he would do so.

In 1994, he wrote what appeared to be a speech to be delivered to cardinals in which said he intended to resign "in the case of an illness determined to be incurable and which impedes the (sufficient) exercise of the function of the petrine ministry."

In a memo signed and dated five years earlier, on Feb. 15, 1989, he similarly wrote that if he was unable to sufficiently do his job because of an incurable illness, he would "renounce my sacred and canonical office" and leave it up to the top cardinals to carry out his wishes.

John Paul suffered from Parkinson's disease for many years before he eventually died of septic shock and cardiocirculatory collapse, preceded by heart and kidney failure brought on by a urinary tract infection.

Prior to his death, John Paul had been in and out of the hospital for two months and, by the end, had lost the ability to speak.

The book goes on sale in Italy on Wednesday. The publisher Rizzoli said there were no immediate plans for translations.