25 Secrets of Mona Lisa Revealed

Images of the Mona Lisa reveal hidden details in infrared and visible light. CREDIT: PRNewsFoto/RYP Australia.

New images uncover 25 secrets about the Mona Lisa, including proof that Leonardo da Vinci gave her eyebrows, solving a long-held mystery.

The images are part of an exhibition, "Mona Lisa Secrets Revealed," which features new research by French engineer Pascal Cotte and debuts in the United States at the Metreon Center in San Francisco, where it will remain through the end of this year. The Mona Lisa showcase is part of a larger exhibition called "Da Vinci: An Exhibition of Genius."

Cotte, founder of Lumiere Technology, scanned the painting with a 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera he invented, which uses 13 wavelengths from ultraviolet light to infrared. The resulting images peel away centuries of varnish and other alterations, shedding light on how the artist brought the painted figure to life and how she appeared to da Vinci and his contemporaries.

"The face of Mona Lisa appears slightly wider and the smile is different and the eyes are different," Cotte said. "The smile is more accentuated I would say."

Mona Lisa mysteries

A zoomed-in image of Mona Lisa's left eye revealed a single brush stroke in the eyebrow region, Cotte said.

"I am an engineer and scientist, so for me all has to be logical. It was not logical that Mona Lisa does not have any eyebrows or eyelashes," Cotte told LiveScience. "I discovered one hair of the eyebrow."

Another conundrum had been the position of the subject's right arm, which lies across her stomach. This was the first time, Cotte said, that a painter had rendered a subject's arm and wrist in such a position. While other artists had never understood da Vinci's reasoning, they copied it nonetheless.

Cotte discovered the pigment just behind the right wrist matched up perfectly with that of the painted cover that drapes across Mona Lisa's knee. So it did make sense: The forearm and wrist held up one side of a blanket.

"The wrist of the right hand is up high on the stomach. But if you look deeply in the infrared you understand that she holds a cover with her wrist," Cotte said.

Behind a painting

The infrared images also revealed da Vinci's preparatory drawings that lie behind layers of varnish and paint, showing that the Renaissance man was also human.

"If you look at the left hand you see the first position of the finger, and he changed his mind for another position," Cotte said. "Even Leonardo da Vinci had hesitation."

Other revelations include:

• Lace on Mona Lisa's dress
• The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.
• A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.
• The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.
• The blanket covering Mona Lisa's knees also covers her stomach.
• The left finger was not completely finished.
• A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.
• And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.

In the larger picture, Cotte said when he stands back and looks up at the enlarged infrared image of Mona Lisa, her beauty and mystique are apparent.

"If you are in front of this huge enlargement of Mona Lisa, you understand instantly why Mona Lisa is so famous," Cotte said. He added, it's something you have to see with your own eyes.

The secret of Mona Lisa's smile lies in Leonardo's painting

I have a bone to pick with archaeologists searching a Florence convent for the skeleton of Leonardo's model. Their faffing detracts from the basic miracle of his handiwork

Face it … Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Click for full image. Photograph: Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis

Why does the Mona Lisa smile? Because she's laughing inside at all the garbage that is reported about her.

It is time to tell some home truths about the Leonardo da Vinci industry. This great artist really deserves better than the media circus of pseudoscience and hocus pocus that surrounds his art. No genius merits closer attention from today's world than Leonardo. His mind, as revealed in his notebooks, is a source of endless fascination, just as his few surviving paintings are infinitely enigmatic. But instead of stories or interpretations that enrich our understanding of Leonardo, the world media delights in endless tittle-tattle and nonsense that just makes his art less meaningful, and reduces him to a bearded magus who painted empty icons.

The latest story concerns a team of archaeologists who are optimisticallysearching for the bones of Lisa Gherardini, the model for the Mona Lisa, in a convent in Florence. What are the chances of finding that particular skeleton among all the nuns ever buried there?

Needle. Haystack. Those are the words that come to mind, and when you read the small print, the investigators are not even claiming to have found the bones they covet.

What would this skeleton, supposing it was actually to be found, reveal about the Mona Lisa? Inane reports say it can reveal the secret of Lisa's smile. How, exactly, can a skull explain a miracle of painting?

An x-ray image taken of the Mona Lisa in the laboratories of the Louvre, which owns Leonardo's painting, suggests that when he first sketched out his portrait of a Florentine merchant's wife in 1503 she did not smile at all. The smile, in other words, emerged as he reworked the painting over several years. It is his artistic creation. Everything about this painting is richly worked. Its meaning lies in his imagination and his ideas, not in some secret skeletal clue buried in a vault.

This kind of sensationalist story just feeds the attitude that causes some people to stand in front of the Mona Lisa taking cameraphone pictures instead of looking at her.

Only last week an equally daft Leonardo story splatted against the wall of reality like the rotten tomato it was. This was the silly claim that a copy of the Mona Lisa is actually Leonardo's first painting of her. This claim was never going anywhere. Not only is the supposed "Leonardo" painted on canvas, whereas he painted on wooden panels, but it doesn't look like his handiwork at all. It has no trace of his ineffable tender touch. It is a copy.

Leonardo da Vinci is an artist who deserves the fuss. In a way, the more stories about him the merrier. But please. We have had enough of thesesub-Dan Brown fantasies that just get in the way of the power of a profound genius.