The Mona Lisa is Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting. Yet, it remains cloaked in secrecy to this day. Who was she? Is it even the original painting? Why was it painted? And how did da Vinci create that strange smile of hers?
Mysteries of the Mona Lisa?
Many of those mysteries aren’t going away anytime soon. However, a recent discovery might shed some new light on them. Researchers have discovered a copy of the Mona Lisa which was painted in da Vinci’s studio at about the same time as the original. Here’s more on the Mona Lisa from Wired:
A copy of the Mona Lisa that was painted in Leonardo’s studio has been discovered in Spain’s national art museum, the Prado. The discovery could change our understanding of the famous painting…
Philippa Warr, Wired contributor and editor of Art’s In The Right Place, said in an email: “The scientific processes applied to the Prado work suggest that both the Leonardo original and the Prado version were painted in tandem, with the Prado version recording the evolution of the famous work through changes in the underdrawings. The discovery of the exact nature of the Prado work could be key in answering (or at least narrowing down) some of the mysteries which surround Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.”