Buzz
Debates surrounding Mona Lisa, the masterpiece by Leonardo Da Vinci, often center on the question of whether the subject is faking a smile. However, a more in-depth look might lead some to wonder if the portrait showcases a woman without eyebrows, as her forehead appears strangely hairless.
What’s the conclusion? Possibly yes. But things may have changed.
It’s likely that in painting the Mona Lisa, Da Vinci was reflecting the popular beauty standards of 16th-century Italy, where women frequently plucked or shaved their eyebrows. There’s also a strong possibility that Lisa Gherardini, the woman thought to be the model for the painting—whose husband commissioned Da Vinci—may have had no eyebrows for this very reason.
In 2007, Pascal Cotte, a French photographer and engineer, cast doubt on this theory. Using a specialized camera capable of capturing an image with 240 million pixels, Cotte claimed he could discern the faint outline of an eyebrow hair on her face. Perhaps Da Vinci truly intended to portray his subject with eyebrows.
If Cotte’s observation holds true, why is there just one hair visible? It’s possible, Cotte suggested, that Da Vinci’s technique of painting a glaze over most of the artwork and then adding fine details on top of it may have caused the topmost layer to become fragile. Over time, restoration efforts may have accidentally erased her eyebrow and eyelash features.
“By closely inspecting Mona Lisa's eye, you can clearly notice that the cracks around it have somewhat faded. This could be explained by a curator or restorer cleaning the eye, which likely removed the eyelashes and eyebrow,” Cotte told The Telegraph in 2007.
Cotte, who revealed he had been fascinated by the Mona Lisa since his childhood in the 1960s—visiting so frequently that a security guard once offered him a chair—was granted access to the painting by the Louvre in 2004. He was even allowed to remove the precious artwork from its protective glass case for photography. After over 3,000 hours of analyzing his collected data, Cotte claimed he was able to uncover hidden layers of the painting. He suggested that Da Vinci had shifted the position of the subject’s left fingers, originally created a wider smile, and included a blanket that is now mostly faded.
Cotte’s photographs were later displayed in a San Francisco Mona Lisa exhibit, allowing viewers to form their own conclusions about whether Mona Lisa's eyebrows were intentionally removed. This adds another layer of intrigue to a painting that continues to captivate and will likely do so for another 500 years.
