Who posed for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”? CNN’s Ben Wedeman reported that scientists may soon find the answer to this age-old question.

In Florence, Italy, old records indicate the burial site for Lisa Gherardini, the second wife of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. That’s Lisa as in Mona Lisa. The records led to a derelict building standing on the remains of a Franciscan convent.

Silvano Vinceti and his team exhumed and identified Lisa Gherardini’s remains. Bone fragments will be sent to universities, where researchers will analyze DNA and compare the DNA profile with DNA profiles of two confirmed relatives of Gherardini.

“Once we identify the remains,” Vinceti told CNN, “we can reconstruct the face, with a margin of error of 2 to 8 percent. By doing this, we will finally be able to answer the question the art historians can’t: Who was the model for Leonardo?”

While these efforts may reveal the true face of the Mona Lisa model, the mysterious smile is another matter. The smile did not belong to Gherardini, Vinceti claims. Rather, da Vinci lifted the smile from his longtime assistant, Gian Giacomo Caprotti.