ROME -- The world's most famously enigmatic woman may have shed some of her mystery.

An amateur Italian historian said yesterday he has found the final resting place of the woman some believe inspired Leonardo da Vinci's most renowned painting, the "Mona Lisa."

A death certificate shows Lisa Gherardini -- the Renaissance woman some believe was the model for the "Mona Lisa" -- died July 15, 1542, in Florence and is buried in a convent in central Florence, Giuseppe Pallanti said.

"Maybe Leonardo chose a woman like many others," Pallanti, a high school economics teacher in Florence, said.

"She was not a noblewoman, or a princess. She was a family woman."

Still, it's not certain that Gherardini, who was born in 1479 and married a rich silk merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, is the woman in the painting.