Read this book and the world''s most famous image will never look the same again. For the world''s greatest cultural icon still has secrets to reveal - not the silly secrets that the ''Leonardo loonies'' continue to advance, but previously unknown facts about the lives of Leonardo, his father, Lisa Gherardini, the subject of the portrait, and her husband Francesco del Giocondo. From this factual beginning we see how the painting metamorphosed into a ''universal picture'' that became the prime vehicle for Leonardo''s prodigious knowledge of the human and natural worlds. We learn about the new money of the ambitious merchant who married into the old gentry of Lisa''s family. We discover Lisa''s life as a wife and mother, her association with sexual scandals, and her later life in a convent. We meet, for the first time, previously undiscovered members of Leonardo''s immediate family and discover new information about his early life. The tiny hill town of Vinci is placed before us, with it
