Mona Lisa

based on my research, The Mona Lisa's mysterious expression may have captivated the world, but hers isn't the only enigmatic smile Leonardo da Vinci created. Researchers examining an earlier painting by the Renaissance master claim to have unravelled. the painter's secret to creating an 'uncatchable smile'.

According to Brian Bixler It would be easy to blame author Dan Brown and his blockbuster book and subsequent movie, “The Da Vinci Code”, for renewed public interest in the mysteries surrounding the world’s most famous portrait. The novel imagines all sorts of keys in the artist’s work that unlock mysteries of the ages. But even before Brown published his fictional tome, Mona Lisa has been an object of scrutiny for 500 years as scholars have tried to find answers to questions raised by the masterpiece. Researchers are currently lifting and testing bone sets from an Italian convent in hopes of identifying the remains of Lisa Gherardini, whom many believe to be the portrait’s subject. Those involved with the project to exhume her remains and use the skull to reconstruct her face say it will prove with more certainty that Mona Lisa is who they think she is, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant. DNA results may be completed as early as June. 

the 500th anniversary of the painting’s creation, the Mona Lisa has been laser scanned, examined with infrared light and digitally dissected to extract some of the secrets she might be hiding. In MIT’s journal, Leonardo, physicist Diogo Queiros-Conde takes a scientific approach to the phenomenon. The blending of pigments around the eyes and mouth play a trick on the human eye, he explains. When humans blink, less light filters to the retina and the eyes recognize various combinations of colors depending on the level of light. Remember, Da Vinci had as much of a scientific mind as an artistic one. Perhaps he intentionally painted Mona Lisa to have a flickering smile.

Other experiments have been conducted to discern more information from the painting and its anomalies. Digital analysis has revealed that Da Vinci’s facial characteristics and those of the woman in the painting are almost perfectly aligned with one another. That was enough to convince at least one researcher that the image is actually Da Vinci in drag.

There's Comparison to drawing sometimes identified as Leonardo's self-portrait. Leonardo's self-portrait obtained by stereoscopic observation. Some have seen a facial similarity between the Mona Lisa and other paintings, such as St. John the Baptist, sometimes claimed to be a portrait of Salai.