ART

A portrait of an Italian noblewoman exists beneath the Mona Lisa, says Lillian Schwartz, an art researcher for Bell Laboratories who raised some eyebrows last year with the theory that Leonardo da Vinci was his own model for the Mona Lisa. Computer analysis of an X-ray of the artwork found that Da Vinci had painted the Mona Lisa over a portrait of Isabella of Aragon, a duchess in the royal court of Milan, Schwartz said. Da Vinci probably chose not to finish the portrait of Isabella because her husband died a mysterious death and her duchy was stolen from her, she said.