In May, this column talked about Italy's plan to dig up Mona Lisa's grave under a Florentine nunnery to verify that she's the one in the painting? http://telecomadvisors.biz/www.examiner.com/art-in-tampa-bay/art-appreciation-where-are-you A death certificate indicates that Mona was buried there in 1542.

The dastardly deed is now done and a preliminary analyses of the unearthed skull and bones shows they belong to a female. The next step will be to compare the skeletal DNA with two of Mona's children buried beneath a church elsewhere in Florence. If there's a match, the face will be reconstructed and compared to the one in Leonardo's painting.

All of which is a waste of time. Because the mysterious smile attracts some six million visitors to the Musée du Louvre each year, who needs to know the sitter's identity? Doesn't disturbing a woman's resting place take curiosity too far? Yet the search goes on. The list of assumptions grows like crab grass.

Let's see, there was the historical fiction writer Rina De' Firenze, who said the model in the painting was Leonardo's mother, Caterina. Why? Just a premonition, she said - that and repeated visions of the artist's mother urging her to tell this to the world.

And let's not forget the theory of Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs, a pioneer in computer graphics and computer art, who believes that Mona is really Leonardo. By digitizing the features of both Leonardo's face and Mona's and merging them, she said, they line up.

Other takes include Dr. Kenneth D. Keele, who wrote in a medical journal that Mona was pregnant. How could he tell? The maternal calm of her smile.

Then there's the finding of Silvano Vincente, president of Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage (he also led the archeologists on the grave dig). He says that under magnification, he sees messages in the eyes – letters, like LV.  

The newest take on the portrait comes from a New York painter, Ron Piccirillo. To hear him tell it, heads of a lion, an ape and a buffalo hover near the head of the figure, when seen in the painting turned on its side.  He also sees a snake coming out of the left-hand side of her body.

He made the "discovery" after reading entries in Leonardo's journals, like this one:  "Give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit."

Not very conclusive, is it?

To be fair, history does show that Leonardo was an animal lover. As a boy he collected lizards, hedgehogs and snakes and he was a vegetarian. His journalsare also full of animal drawings. He included animals in paintings, too: "Lady With The Ermine" and "Madonna and Child with St. Anne," which shows the Infant Jesus holding a little lamb.

As well, in a notebook of advice for artists, Leonardo talked about universal connections and how man is really a quadruped who, in infancy crawls on all fours, and when grown, moves his limbs like a horse trotting.

But where does all this take us? Let's say that Piccirillo is right about animals in "Mona Lisa." Let's also say that Vincente is right about letters in the eyes. Let's even say that DNA tests prove that the woman in the grave is or isn't Mona. 

So what? Anybody?