The Mona Lisa Had Eyebrows And A Moustache
THE Mona Lisa. She had enigmatic eyebrows. Two of them. She did not have a monobrow as many has supposed. But she did have a moustache.
An art expert called Pascal Cotte looked at the painting through a 240 megapixel camera. He says Leonardo da Vinci created his masterpiece in layers, the final varnish producing the effect of a three-dimensional face.
And then on tops of the glaze, da Vinci painted spots, moles, sideburns, a pair of wire-framed glasses and eyebrows. She also had the word “LEO” inside her bottom lip.
Says Cotte:
“That could explain why the eyebrows have disappeared – they have faded because of chemical reactions or they have been cleaned off.”
This is what happens when you don’t use a sharpie or at the very last a biro to draw on the brows.
According to Cotte, the Mona Lisa looked “totally different” 5 centuries ago, when the woman was seated under a blue sky, had thick red eyebrows and a slight whisper of a pendant moustache. Says he:
“The smile, the glance, the face were all wider.”
Cotte is plugging his show, The Secrets of the Mona Lisa, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, sponsored by Gillette for women and Veet hair removal waxes.
Posted: 12th, November 2009 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
