La Gioconda

It is official. They know who she is. She isn't Leonardo in drag, she isn't some lover (maybe.) She is the wife of a merchant. Her name is Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant. This would make sense upon analysis. The dangerous terrain in the background, the veil on her head.

How'd they figure it out?
Dated notes scribbled in the margins of a book by its owner in October 1503. The notes were made by a Florentine city official Agostino Vespucci, an acquaintance of the artist, in a collection of letters by the Roman orator Cicero.

The comments compare Leonardo to the ancient Greek artist Apelles and say he was working on three paintings at the time, one of them a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

The painting, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, is also known as "La Gioconda" meaning the happy or joyful woman in Italian, a title which also suggests the woman's married name.

Neato. Yet, anti-climatic.