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Mona Lisa Unmasked
A great mystery in the art world has finally been solved! You could call it the case of the lady with a secretive smile. She is the subject of one of the world's greatest paintings -- the Mona Lisa. The portrait of a woman with long brown hair was done in the early 1500s. Everyone knew Leonardo Da Vinci painted it, but nobody knew for certain the name of the woman in the painting.
The discovery of her identity first came to light in 2005. A German historian was looking through a book from 1503 and he saw that someone wrote a note in the margin. The scribbles reveal that Mona Lisa was Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo. She was married to a silk merchant from Florence, Italy. Leonardo met Lisa in 1500. In Italian, the painting is called "La Gioconda". So the discovery confirms what people suspected for centuries but could not prove until now.
The Mona Lisa is on display at a museum in Paris, France, called the Louvre. It is the most valuable painting ever insured. In the picture, the woman has a peculiar smile. People have often wondered who she was, and what she was thinking about when Da Vinci painted her. We may never know what she was thinking, but now we know who she was.
I'm Isaac and that's what happened in the Arts this week.
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