Mona Lisa’s Mysterious Background Decrypted by Art-Loving Geologist 

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is pictured at the Louvre museum in Paris, France June 7, 2023. (Reuters)
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is pictured at the Louvre museum in Paris, France June 7, 2023. (Reuters)
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Mona Lisa’s Mysterious Background Decrypted by Art-Loving Geologist 

The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is pictured at the Louvre museum in Paris, France June 7, 2023. (Reuters)
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci is pictured at the Louvre museum in Paris, France June 7, 2023. (Reuters)

Over 500 years after Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, an academic believes she has unraveled the mystery about the backdrop to one of the world's most famous works of art.

Art historians have long debated its landscape, speculating on the locations that could have inspired Leonardo, but the geologist and Italian Renaissance specialist Ann Pizzorusso thinks she has pinpointed it to Lecco in northern Italy.

"When I came to Lecco, I realized he had painted the Mona Lisa here," Pizzorusso said, speaking of the small town on the shores of Lake Como, hitherto best known as the setting of Alessandro Manzoni's masterpiece novel "The Betrothed".

According to the scholar, the arched bridge depicted in the painting would correspond to the 14th-century Ponte Azzone Visconti, even though previous theories had related it to similar structures in other Italian cities, such as Arezzo and Bobbio.

Pizzorusso is not the first person to have claimed to have solved the mystery, but she cites her knowledge of geology to back her claims.

"The bridge to me was not the important aspect of painting," Pizzorusso said. "In the other hypotheses the geology was just incorrect."

The geologist found that rock formations in Lecco were limestone, which matched what is depicted behind the noblewoman.

"When you look at the Mona Lisa, you see this part of the Adda River, and you see another lake behind it, which are perfectly shown underneath these sawtooth mountains," she said from the spot where the scene could have been painted.

Pizzorusso's research on Leonardo "shows perfectly the extent to which the artist and the scientist came together," said Michael Daley, executive director of ArtWatch UK, a nonprofit organization monitoring the conservation of artworks.

"No art historian is qualified to take Ann on in terms of her scientific understanding. The other studies are dead ducks now," he said.



UN Puts 4th Century Gaza Monastery on Endangered Site List

The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
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UN Puts 4th Century Gaza Monastery on Endangered Site List

The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File
The Saint Hilarion complex dates back to the fourth century. Mahmud HAMS / AFP/File

The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza, the body said Friday.
UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the "imminent threats" it faced.
"It's the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context," Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, told AFP, referring to the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.
In December, the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant "provisional enhanced protection" -- the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention -- to the site.
UNESCO had then said it was "already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before October 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture" in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.