After-words will be
selling books at an off-site event for Mona
Lisa: A Life Discovered by Dianne Hales on September 9th at 6pm.
There will be a discussion led by the
author and an opportunity for her to sign books afterwards. This event is free and open to the public. The
Italian Cultural Institute is located at 500 N. Michigan Avenue, 14th
Floor, Suite 1450.
In Mona
Lisa: A Life Discovered (Simon
& Schuster; August 5, 2014; $28.00), award-winning author Dianne Hales
unearth the story of Mona Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the woman believed to
be the model for Leonardo DaVinci’s most famous work. The result is “cultural
history that reads like a detective novel” (Ross King, author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Leonardo
and the Last Supper) that allows readers “to know the painting in profound
news ways” (Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun). An intriguing
blend of biography, history, and memoir, Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered takes readers beyond the frame of
Leonardo’s masterpiece and introduces them to the woman behind the smile. A
recent Publishers Weekly review says of the book, “Entertaining…Combining
history, whimsical biography, personal travelogue, and love letter to Italy,
the book portrays Lisa Gherardini has a Renaissance Everywoman…an accessible,
vivid examination of women’s lives in Florence in that period.”
The Italian Cultural
Institute of Chicago, directed by Andrea Raos, is the cultural office of the
Consulate General of Italy in Chicago. Founded in 1985, the Institute is one of
five cultural agencies of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the United
States. The Institute serves as a convenient source for information about
Italian life and culture that showcases Italy’s classic and contemporary
heritage with particular reference to art, music, cinema, design, architecture,
science, and technology.
