Agostino Vespucci was a Florentine chancellery official, clerk, and assistant to

Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( , , ; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527), occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel ( , ; see below), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. ...

, among others. He is most well known for helping to confirm the subject of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

's ''

Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' ( ; it, Gioconda or ; french: Joconde ) is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known ...

'' as

Lisa del Giocondo Lisa del Giocondo (; ; June 15, 1479 – July 15, 1542) was an Italian noblewoman and member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. Her name was given to the ''Mona Lisa'', her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Le ...

, but is also the author of a number of surviving letters and manuscripts.

''Mona Lisa''

The identity of the young woman in Leonardo's ''Mona Lisa'' had been difficult to ascertain due to a lack of decisive contemporary sources of information about the painting. This changed upon the discovery of a comment written by Vespucci in the margin of a 1477 edition of

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

's ', now held by the

Heidelberg University } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

Library. The discovery was made by Dr. Armin Schlechter in 2005 while he was cataloguing the book for an

incunabula In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pro ...

exhibit at the library. The unabbreviated Latin text of the note is as follows: ' (English: "Apelles the painter. That is the way Leonardo da Vinci does it with all of his pictures, like, for example, with the countenance of Lisa del Giocondo and that of Anne, the mother of the Virgin. We will see how he is going to do it regarding the great council chamber, the thing which he has just come to terms about with the

gonfaloniere The Gonfalonier (in Italian: ''Gonfaloniere'') was the holder of a highly prestigious communal office in medieval and Renaissance Italy, notably in Florence and the Papal States. The name derives from ''gonfalone'' (in English, gonfalon), the ter ...

. October 1503.") In the comment Vespucci notes a similarity of style between Leonardo and the renowned ancient Greek painter

Apelles Apelles of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἀπελλῆς; fl. 4th century BC) was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom much of modern scholars' knowledge of this artist is owed (''Naturalis Historia'' 35.36.79–97 and ''passim'' ...

, in that both artists would first render the head and shoulders of subjects in extraordinary detail before continuing with the rest of the painting. As an example Vespucci lists Leonardo's work on the portrait of "Lisa del Giocondo," and dates his comment "October 1503." The inclusion of the name and date allowed validation with a later known (but often unreliable) source published in 1550 and written by art historian

Giorgio Vasari Giorgio Vasari (, also , ; 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance Master, who worked as a painter, architect, engineer, writer, and historian, who is best known for his work ''The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculpt ...

, who states that during this period Leonardo had taken a commission from Francesco del Giocondo to paint his wife, "'." Here ''Mona'' was not intended as a name, but as an abbreviation of ', the Italian literary form of ''Lady''.

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vespucci, Agostino 15th-century births 16th-century deaths 16th-century people of the Republic of Florence