Exhumation bid to solve Mona Lisa mystery

If the artist's skull is intact, the scientists can go to the heart of a question that has fascinated scholars and the public for centuries: the identity of the Mona Lisa.

One theory is that the female figure in the painting, right, is in fact a disguised self-portrait of da Vinci, left.

Recreating a virtual and then physical reconstruction of the artist's face, they can compare it with the smiling face in the painting, experts involved in the project said. Anthropologist Giorgio Gruppioni added: "We don't know what we'll find if the tomb is opened, we could even just find grains and dust."

The leader of the group, Silvano Vinceti, will press his case with French officials in charge of the purported burial site at Amboise Castle in the Loire Valley next week. But the Italian enthusiasm may be premature. In France, exhumation requires a long legal procedure, and precedent suggests it's likely to take even longer when it involves a person of great note such as da Vinci.