A photograph

Amazing story from Drew Gardner:

Meeting the Mona Lisa -The Latest in the Descendants Series
This is a story that starts some 5 years ago.

While I was teaching at the excellent Maine Media Workshops. I gave a lecture at the wonderful Union Hall which was open to the public, as part of my lecture I showed my ‘Descendants’ project, where I recreate portraits of famous or notable historic figures with their direct Descendants.

I was enjoying a drink with some of the crew in Gilbert’s bar in Portland.

A man walked up to me and said that they had recently discovered the identity and direct descendants of the Mona Lisa, and he knew them.

Perhaps it was the Makers Mark on the rocks or perhaps it just sounded a little too unlikely, but I rather unwisely forgot all about it.

Until some 5 months later, when I was staying with my good friend Jonathan Laurence.

I walked into the same bar and there was a small hint of a glimmer of a recollection that someone had told me the unlikely tale of the the descendants of the Mona Lisa.

Five months on and this nugget of a rumour now intrigued me.

A few clicks on google and I found it was all true.

The descendants of the Mona Lisa, the 15 times great granddaughters of the Mona Lisa to be precise, were in fact two Italian princesses, living in Tuscany.

Lisa and Irina Strozzi who run the world renowned Strozzi winery

Drew assembled quite a team of photographers (including strobe wizzard David Hobby whose website is where I first heard about this) and the end result is amazing: