Search starts for Mona Lisa's bones

Italian researchers have begun looking for the remains of a Renaissance woman many believed posed for the Mona Lisa.

Italian researchers have begun looking for the remains of a Renaissance woman many believed posed for the Mona Lisa.

The researchers have used a geo-radar device to search for underground tombs in a Florence convent where Lisa Gherardini is believed to be buried.

Tradition has long linked the wife of a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo to Leonardo da Vinci's painting which is known in Italian as La Gioconda.

Researchers say Gherardini spent the last years of her life at the convent, looked after by her two daughters who were nuns, and was buried there in 1542.