ART

Was Leonardo da Vinci a plagiarist? Probably not, but archeologists have just begun unearthing a 1,700-year-old mosaic floor in a Roman ruin near Zippori, Israel, containing the haunting portrait of a woman who looks very much like the Mona Lisa. The 144-square-foot mosaic from a Roman villa is being painstakingly rolled up strip by strip and moved 125 miles south to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to preserve the picture of the 4th-Century beauty. “It’s the eyes. They follow you. There is nothing like her in contemporary Roman art,” said Eric M. Meyers, an archeologist from Duke University in Durham, N.C. The portrait and other panels of the mosaic are done in tiny, naturally colored stones that Meyers said were laid down over a watercolor blueprint painted by the artist. Sepphoris, where the modern-day moshav cooperative farm of Zippori is located, was the capital of the Galilee province of Roman Palestine.