Mona Lisa's birthplace found

That's right folks. Check out the following article in italymag.co.uk, dated 24 April 2007:

The birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been located in her home town, Florence.

Leonardo scholar Giuseppe Pallanti says documents show she was born in a house that once stood on a side-street of Via Maggio, where Florence’s antiques dealers do their trade.

Pallanti also says he has found the house where Lisa Gherardini lived after marrying wealthy merchant Francesco Del Giocondo, a patrician building in the famed San Lorenzo area.

Pallanti, who has been poring through the city’s archives for decades, has now tracked down all three of the most significant places in the life of Lisa Gherardini.

In mid-January the researcher said he had tracked down her burial place to the former Convent of St Orsula, in the heart of the city.

Lisa Del Giocondo died in the convent after retiring there near the end of her life.

Unveiling his latest discovery, Pallanti said his research had wiped away all doubt about the identity of La Gioconda, as the Italians call the Mona Lisa because of the surname of her husband, Giocondo.

“It was her, Lisa, the wife of the merchant Francesco Del Giocondo - and she lived quite close to Leonardo in San Lorenzo, at the end of what is now Via della Stufa,” Pallanti said.

Most modern scholars have agreed with Pallante that the Mona Lisa sitter was Lisa del Giocondo.

The couple were married in 1495 when the bride was 16 and the groom 35.

It has frequently been suggested that del Giocondo commissioned Leonardo to paint his Mona Lisa (mona is the standard Italian contraction for madonna, or “my lady,”) to mark his wife’s pregnancy or the recent birth of their second child in December 1502.

Although pregnancy or childbirth have frequently been put forward in the past as explanations for Mona Lisa’s cryptic smile, other theories have not been lacking - some less plausible than others.

Some have argued that the painting is a self-portrait of the artist, or one of his favourite male lovers in disguise, citing the fact that Da Vinci never actually relinquished the painting and kept it with him up until his death in Amboise, France in 1519.

The most curious theories have been provided by medical experts-cum-art lovers.

One group of medical researchers has maintained that the sitter’s mouth is so firmly shut because she was undergoing mercury treatment for syphilis which turned her teeth black.

An American dentist has claimed that the tight-lipped expression was typical of people who have lost their front teeth, while a Danish doctor was convinced she suffered from congenital palsy which affected the left side of her face and this is why her hands are overly large.

A French surgeon has also put forth his view that she was semi-paralysed, perhaps as the result of a stroke, and that this explained why one hand looks relaxed and the other tense.

Leading American feminist Camille Paglia simply concluded that the cool, appraising smile showed that “what Mona Lisa is ultimately saying is that males are unnecessary”.

Rome to have 'new Louvre'

From italymag.co.uk, dated 21 April 2007:

Rome is set to show off its ancient glory in a swathe of old and new museums centred on the Capitol Hill.

“It will be a new Louvre,” said Mayor Walter Veltroni, announcing the plans.

The little-known but richly attractive Museum of Roman History - currently off the tourist map in the Mussolini-built suburb EUR - is to move into a municipal building on the edge of the Circus Maximus.

The museum’s much-admired collection of artefacts and scale model of ancient Rome will be joined, Veltroni said, by “other prestigious pieces” like the fragments of the Forma Urbis Severiana, a marble plan of the city sculpted under Emperor Septimius Severus (146-211 AD).

Never-seen treasures from storehouses, such as the ancient jewels of the Crepereia Trifena collection, tomb adornments and ivory dolls, will be moved into the new showcase.

To complete its attractions, Veltroni said the site on Via dei Cerchi would also house a multimedia museum of ancient Rome, where visitors will be able to take cyberspace tours of the city that ruled the world.

The newly refurbished Capitol Museums - on the old and new hub of Rome, the Capitol Hill - will form the centre of the new web of exhibition spaces, Veltroni said.

On the other side of the Capitol from the Circus Maximus, in Trajan’s Markets, the new Museum of the Imperial Forums will complete the art-lovers’ mecca, he said.

This will be the first piece of the jigsaw to open, in October, he said.

The museum will house a wealth of artefacts found in recent digs in the forums, Rome Cultural Heritage Superintendent Eugenio La Rocca said.

There will be statues of Dacians conquered by Hadrian in 101-106 AD, a set of splendid pillars in human form, called caryatids, from the Forum of Augustus, as well as a series of medieval ceramics among the ruins.

“The total area of the sites and buildings will measure 61,000 square metres,” Veltroni said, “compared to the 70,000 of the Louvre”.

The new exhibition network will be called The Great Capitol, he said.

Mediterranean diet holding firm

From italymag.co.uk, dated 21 April 2007:

Far from getting fat on ‘foreign’ junk food, most Italians are still clinging to the traditional Mediterranean diet that has won so much praise from dieticians, according to new data.

Italians eat more fruit and vegetables than any other EU country except Greece, they eat almost twice as much fish as 20 years ago and - as expected - they are world’s biggest consumers of pasta.

In addition to this, they drink half the alcoholic spirits they did 30 years ago and consume less cakes and sweets every year than any other nation in Europe - 25 kilos a head, compared to 58 kilos in Britain.

The latest figures, produced by the Federalimentare Italian food industry federation, were presented on Friday at the opening of the Cibus Italian food fair in Rome.

They appeared to reassure Italians who have recently been warned that they are getting fatter by the year because of a gradual abandonment of traditional eating habits and a growing tendency to eat out.

In fact, it seems that most are still more or less on the right track.

Partly thanks to the Mediterranean diet, Italian men currently have a life expectancy of 77.4 and Italian women of 83.6, figures which are far higher than the European Union average.

But while the majority of Italians appear to be still eating quite healthily, experts note a worrying tendency among the young to abandon the traditional diet of fish, fruit, vegetables, pasta and olive oil.

Farmers’ association Coldiretti warned last autumn that kids are gobbling up too many sugar-laden snacks and other fattening foods, with the result that obesity levels are rising.

Statistics show that 24% of Italian children and teenagers in have major weight problems while 4% are “seriously obese”.

That puts Italy at the top of the European rankings although Malta, Greece and Spain follow close on its heels.

Coldiretti claims Italy’s impressive life expectancy is destined to fall unless many of today’s youngsters change their habits, ideally by eating the way their parents do.

In a bid to encourage this, the government recently launched its ‘Earn Health’ plan, which includes a drive to make sure healthy snacks such as fruit are available in automatic dispensers in school.

Restoration of Italy's only Etruscan seaport

From ItalyMag.co.uk, dated 18 April 2007:

Italy’s only seaside Etruscan city has been restored on the coast north of this Tuscan port.

The two-year, three-million-euro project has opened up new areas of the ancient necropolis, much of which will be accessible for the first time just outside the charming medieval village of Populonia.

Populonia, as the ancient city has also been called, was famous for working iron from the mines on the island of Elba and the new site lay-out shows visitors how this was done.

The tour features visits to spots with iron-working artefacts, visible traces of iron ore and reconstructions of how the pre-Roman people worked the metal that was their life-blood.

“Iron was produced on an industrial scale here,” said local expert Massimo Zucconi.

The more adventurous visitor can also climb up to caves carved into the cliffs overlooking the sea to see local quarries and grave sites.

One of the other highlights of the visit is a huge necropolis featuring the characteristic tumulus mounds that housed the lasting resting places of Etruscan nobles.

The revamped site has been dedicated to the late Florentine archaeologist Riccardo Francovich, who battled all his life to make more of Italy’s ancient sites open to the public.

“Franco was an archaeologist but he refused to believe that archaeology should be shut up in a museum somewhere,” Zucconi said.

The Etruscans were an ancient people known to have lived in the area of Italy between Rome and Florence from the 8th century BC until they were absorbed by Rome about 600 years later.

For centuries they dominated the fledgling city on the Tiber and even supplied its first kings. But most traces of their advanced civilisation, which produced sophisticated art, were obliterated by their Roman successors.

A visit to friends in Siena

On 22 March we stopped by to visit Aimone and Alessandra at Cantina in Piazza and spent a wonderful afternoon over wine and food catching up with each other and just talking about, well, food and wine. After entering the city walls through the Porta Camollia we strolled down the small streets until we crossed the Piazza del Campo and found ourselves in front of one of the finest enoteca's in the city, Cantina in Piazza:

Ciao,

Steve