"ritratto di Caterina Sforza di Lorenzo di Credi"
Posted on 03/13/2002 4:12:53 PM PST by aculeus
A GERMAN art historian claims to have solved one of the greatest mysteries of the Renaissance by discovering the identity of Mona Lisa.
Magdalena Soest, 56, from Leverkusen in Germany, believes that Leonardo da Vinci based his famous portrait on a young, adventurous beauty called Caterina Sforza.
Frau Soest believes that Leonardo based his painting, produced between 1500 and 1506, on a portrait of Sforza, the Duchess of Forlì and Imola, that was painted by the Italian master Lorenzo di Credi.
“I wholeheartedly believe that she is one and the same person,” Frau Soest, a respected artist and consultant to museums in Germany, said.
Germany’s biggest-selling daily newspaper Bild Zeitung compared the two portraits yesterday. There is an obvious likeness, but Frau Soest said that detailed studies she had undertaken of the nose, hair, lips and cheek structure led her to believe that Mona was definitely Caterina.
Born the illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan, and the wife of a follower of the Duke in 1462, Caterina Sforza was a legendary figure in Renaissance Italy, a beautiful woman celebrated for her courage and known as “The Virago”.
At 15 she married Girolamo Riario, whose uncle was Pope Sixtus IV. The Pope gave the couple the titles of the cities of Forlì and Imola, but when he died in 1484 the Riarios failed in a bid to install their own candidate as his successor, despite Caterina and a band of soldiers storming one of Rome’s greatest citadels, the Castel Sant’Angelo.
She overcame the murder of her husband, then that of a lover, then the death of her second husband, Giovanni Medici, but could not resist the rise of the Borgias, who seized her cities in 1500. She was imprisoned for a year, then released. She died in 1509 at the age of 46.
Caterina was painted at the age of 25 by di Credi, in a pose not dissimilar to that in the Mona Lisa. The proud pose, the position of the arms and the enigmatic smile is clearly evident in both. Hitherto, many art historians have subscribed to the theory that Mona was a young Florentine woman, Monna — or Mona — Lisa, who married the well-known figure Francesco del Giocondo in 1495 and thus came to be known as “La Gioconda”.
From the beginning the painting was greatly admired and it came to be considered the prototype of the Renaissance portrait. Leonardo loved the portrait so much that he carried it with him for many years, until it was sold to François I of France.
She was born in 1479 and would be about 24 years old when Leonardo painted her.
Her father was a Florentine Nobel Antonio Maria Di Noldo Gherardini.
She married in 1495 at the age of 16 to Francesco Di Bartolomeo Di Zanolsi del Giocondo who was twice a widower and 19 years her senior.
They became wealthy in the silk trade.
Leonard undertook for Francesco Zanobi del Giocondo the portrait of his wife Mona Lisa.
"Mona" is an honorific for a married woman. So the portrait is really a picture of Mrs. Giocondo. Kinda loses some of its mystique, eh?
Collected here along with other (mostly good) short stories.
Breathtakingly off topic, but amusing nonetheless.
I don't know. I'm doubtful that they are the same.
Virago check-in...
Note: this topic is from . Thanks aculeus.
There is a good biography out on the astounding Catarina Riario Sforza de Medici. It is by Elizabeth Lev entitled The Tigress of Forli.
See 17
Ah, that famous Mona Greta scowl ...
Leni
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