Art historian Silvano Vinceti, who led the research team, announced he is “convinced” it is her.
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In 2010 Mr Vinceti claimed to have found the remains of Caravaggio, the rabble-rousing Renaissance painter, after they had lain in an unmarked grave in Porto Ercole, Tuscany, for four centuries.
He suggested that it could take several years and more advanced technology that has yet to be invented to definitively prove that the bone fragments belong to the real Mona Lisa.
Researchers told reporters in Florence that carbon-14 testing of one of the fragments indicated the remains were compatible with the period.
Lisa Gherardini was the wife of a silk merchant who is believed to have sat for da Vinci.
The search began in 2011, and while no concrete evidence has been found linking this skeleton to that of Gherardini, or her to the painting itself, researchers are not giving up any time soon.
“I’m speaking of historical, anthropological and archaeological analyses that have been carried out very rigorously”.
The bone shards were “fragmented, very deteriorated”, he said.
“And an update from scientists trying to identify the model from Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘Mona Lisa:’ after digging up a woman’s remains and putting them through DNA testing it seems they are no closer to knowing the smile… stay tuned”. He is believed to have commissioned da Vinci to paint a portrait of her in 1503 – the one now hanging in the Louvre museum in Paris.
However there are still a number of questions to be answered, because even if the bones do belong to Gherardini, scholars are still unsure whether she was in fact the model for the world famous painting.
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“What we hope is that sophisticated techniques will eventually allow us to extract and analyse and compare the DNA to be able to ascertain that genetically these are the remains of Lisa Gherardini”. The Mona Lisa was recovered in 1913.
