LISA ROCHON is an award-winning architecture critic and cultural commentator. The author of Up North: Where Canada’s Architecture Meets the Land, she has contributed numerous essays and articles to books and journals. She is a two-time winner of the National Newspaper Award for her Cityspace column in the Globe and Mail, and the recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s President’s Award for Architectural Journalism. Educated at the University of Toronto, and in Paris at Sciences Po and L’École du Louvre, Rochon travelled to Florence many times to retrace the steps of Lisa Gherardini (the Mona Lisa), Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci as she conducted original research for this novel. She was granted rare access to Leonardo’s monastery studio in Florence and to Windsor Castle to study his original drawings. A passionate chronicler of art and our times, Rochon splits her time between Toronto and an olive grove in Tuscany. Find out more about her at www.lisarochon.info