Mona Lisa’s iconic smile was based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s probable gay lover, an art historian has claimed.

The famous portrait that hangs in the Louvre in Paris has undergone infra-red analysis to give the art world more insight into one of the world’s most renowned paintings.

Following his examinations, Silvano Vinceti believes the artwork is an amalgamation of two models: a rich Florentine merchant’s wife, Lisa Gherardini, and da Vinci’s apprentice Gian Giacomo Caprotti, known to the artist as Salai, or Little Devil.

“The Mona Lisa is androgynous - half man and half woman,” he told The Telegraph, explaining that he studied other paintings based on Salai and found striking similarities. “You see it particularly in Mona Lisa’s nose, her forehead and her smile. We’ve come up with an answer to a question that has divided scholars for years. Who was the Mona Lisa based on?”

Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius Show all 5 1 /5 Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius 'The Last Supper' (c 1520) © Royal Academy of Arts, London Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius Renaissance man: Leonardo da Vinci's 'Saint Jerome' (c 1480) © Photo Vatican Museums Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius 'Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with the Ermine)' (c 1489-900) THE PRINCES CZARTORYSKI MUSEUM, CRACOW Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius 'Study for Head of St James with Architecture' (c 1491-3) © The Royal Collection 2011, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II Leonardo da Vinci: A brush with genius 'Virgin of the Rocks' (c 1483-1485) © RMN / Franck Raux



It is thought that Salai began working for da Vinci when he was around 10-years-old, after joining the artist’s household in 1490. He stayed for the next two decades. Gherardini married Francesco del Giocondo, whose family owned an extravagant villa during the period in which da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa (between 1503 and 1506). Vinceti has been excavating a covent in Florence for four years with the aim of unearthing Gherardini’s remains.

As ever with artistic theories, Vinceti’s conclusions have not gone unchallenged. Martin Kemp, a leading da Vinci expert and professor emeritus of history of art at Trinity College, Oxford, has dismissed the claims as “a mishmash of known things, semi-known things and complete fantasy”.

“The infra-red images do nothing to support the idea that Leonardo somehow painted a blend of Lisa Gherardini and Salai,” he said, adding that too little is known about Salai’s appearance.

“Giorgio Vasari (a contemporary painter and a chronicler of Renaissance artists) described him as a pretty boy with curly hair, but that was a standard type of the era,” he continued. “It featured in Leonardo’s work long before Salai came on the scene.”

Popular theories about the Mona Lisa abound, with some art lovers claiming that a lost original featured the model nude. Others believe that the portrait once had eyebrows and eyelashes, while some are convinced that da Vinci created multiple versions of the painting.