"蒙娜麗莎"遺骸被當垃圾傾倒

The remains of the Italian woman who was the model for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa were dug up 30 years ago and now lie in a municipal rubbish tip, an Italian expert has claimed.

Lisa Gherardini died in Florence in 1542 and was buried in the grounds of Sant'Orsola convent.

Over the centuries the Franciscan convent was used as a tobacco factory and a university teaching facility but in the 1980s a redevelopment was launched to convert it into a barracks for Italy's tax police, the Guardia di Finanza.

The developers had no knowledge that it was the final resting place of da Vinci's famous model – that was only discovered in 2007 – and during work to build an underground car park, the convent's foundations were excavated, along with the crumbling remains of graves and tombs.

The rubble was then dumped in a municipal landfill site on the outskirts of Florence.

The prosaic end to the life of one of the best known figures in art history has only recently come to light through a fresh building project for the convent site.

Florence city council wants to turn the half-built police barracks, which has lain semi-derelict and bricked up for years, into a £23 million community arts centre.

Surveys of the site have shown that the site was excavated in the 1980s to such a depth that no tombs or other historical artefacts survived.

Gherardini is believed to have been born in Florence in 1479. At the age of 16 she became the second wife of a wealthy silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, with whom she had five children.

She moved into the convent after his death, staying there for the last four years of her life.

She is believed to have died in the convent at the age of 63 in 1542, according to a document unearthed three years ago by Mr Pallanti during his research.

意大利一位專家日前表示，早在30年前，列奧納多•達•芬奇筆下的《蒙娜麗莎》的原型——一位意大利女子的遺骸就已被挖掘出來，如今被丟棄在市裏的一個垃圾場。

麗莎•格拉爾迪尼於1542年在佛羅倫薩去世，安葬在聖奧索拉修道院。

在過去幾百年間，聖方濟會修道院舊址曾被用作捲菸廠和大學校舍。但在20世紀80年代，這裏被改造成意大利財政局稅務警察的駐地。

直到2007年，人們才發現這裏是達•芬奇筆下最著名的原型人物的安葬地，開發商當年並不知情。在修建地下停車場時，修道院的地基、連同墳墓中破碎的遺骸都被挖開了。

這堆碎石後來被傾倒在佛羅倫薩市郊的一處垃圾填埋場。

這位藝術史上最著名的人物之一平淡地結束了一生，直到最近修道院舊址要建造一座新建築時才爲人所知。

這座未完工的警察駐地已廢棄數年，遍佈瓦礫，佛羅倫薩市議會想把它改造成一座價值2300萬英鎊的社區藝術中心。

對該地的調查顯示，這裏在20世紀80年代挖掘過深，古墓和其它歷史文物都不復存在了。

據稱，格拉爾迪尼於1479年出生於佛羅倫薩，16歲時成爲絲綢富商弗朗西斯科•德爾•喬康多的第二任妻子，兩人育有5名子女。

丈夫去世後，格拉爾迪尼搬到修道院居住，在那裏度過了生命的最後四年時光。

根據三年前帕朗蒂先生在研究中發現的文檔，格拉爾迪尼於1542年在修道院逝世，享年63歲。

Vocabulary:

barrack: any large, plain building in which many people are lodged（臨時性的營房，一片簡陋的大房子）

prosaic: commonplace or dull; matter-of-fact or unimaginative（平淡的）