One of art's biggest mysteries may have been solved

The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world. She's been attacked with soup and is a popular subject for AI art tomfoolery, but we remain captivated by the 500-year-old painting today.

Just as mysterious as the model's enigmatic smile is the landscape in the background. There have been plenty of theories about where Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, but we may finally have the most convincing.

As reported by The Guardian, the geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso says she has pinned down the landscape of the Mona Lisa to Lecco, a city on the southeastern shore of Lake Como in Lombardy, northern Italy. She's matched up the bridge, the mountain range and the lake in the painting to landmarks in the city.

Lecco is home to the 14th-century Azzone Visconti arched bridge, which is overlooked by the southwestern Alps. Meanwhile, da Vinci is known to have visited Lago di Garlate, just south of Lake Como.

The theory stems from Pizzorusso's combination of two areas of expertise. “Geologists don’t look at paintings and art historians don’t look at geology,” Pizzorusso told The Guardian. As a result art historians tended to argue that da Vinci used his imagination to paint the scene or else focused on finding the bridge rather than the geological features. The type of rocks for example. The rocks in Lecco are limestone, and the rocks in the paintings have a grey-white colour, which fits with that.

Pizzorusso was presenting her evidence at a geology conference in Lecco this weekend. While there remain many other theories, her knowledge of both Italy's geology and the places where da Vinci travelled make this one of the most compelling.

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