Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence
and Tuscany in Italy. Her name was given to Mona Lisa, her portrait
commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during
the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Married as
a teenager to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local
official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to
have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived
her husband, who was about 20 years her senior. Centuries after Lisa's
death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a
life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and
hobbyists made the work of art a globally-recognized icon and an
object of commercialization. During the early 21st century, a
discovery made at a university library was powerful enough evidence to
end speculation about the sitter's identity and definitively
identified Lisa del Giocondo as the subject of the Mona Lisa.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_del_Giocondo
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1598:
King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom
of religion to the Huguenots.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Nantes)
1873:
In the wake of a contested election for local political offices in
Colfax, Louisiana, USA, armed white supremacists overpowered freedmen
and the African American state militia trying to control the parish
courthouse, killing over 100 of them.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre)
1919:
British Indian Army troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering in
Amritsar, Punjab in India, killing hundreds of unarmed of men, women
and children.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)
1943:
World War II: Germany announced the discovery of a mass grave of
Polish prisoners-of-war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest
Massacre.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre)
1984:
Indian forces launched a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen
Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with
Pakistan.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Glacier)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
impel: To urge a person; to press on; to incite to action or motion in
any way.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impel)
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Wikiquote of the day:
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
-- Thomas Jefferson
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson)