A team of researchers in Italy has started looking for the remains of the woman long thought to be the model for Leonardo da Vinci's famous ''Mona Lisa'' painting.
The identity of the subject of the Mona Lisa remains one of the great mysteries of the art world. One candidate is a woman called Lisa Gherardini.
The team is using a special radar device at the St Orsola convent in Florence where it thinks she is buried. A recently discovered death certificate suggests she died there in 1542.
The BBC's correspondent in Rome says Gherardini has long been thought to be a model who posed for the picture, although some experts say the final portrait may be a composite of other faces.
She was the wife of a rich silk merchant called Francesco del Giocondo - and in Italy the painting has always been known as "La Gioconda".
It is unclear whether the bones will be in any state to be of use, but the team hopes to carbon-date them and take DNA samples to test with Gherardini's descendants.
It also hopes to create a facial reconstruction from skull fragments.
