The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous pieces of artwork in human chronicle . This half - distance portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci , thought to depict Lisa Gherardini in the former sixteenth 100 , was leave to the King of France centuries ago , and has been on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1797 .
Now , 500 years on from its completion , French scientist Pascal Cotte , has claimed to have uncovered hidden inside information within the picture . As reported byBBC News , this potentially have in mind that the noted paint woman is n’t actually Mona Lisa at all . The determination will be presented in a documentary,“Secrets of the Mona Lisa " , which airs on BBC Two tomorrow at 9 pm GMT .
Cotte , the co - founder ofLumiere Technology , was givenaccess to the painting(officially called La Joconde , the " felicitous woman " ) in 2004 by the Louvre . Using a pioneering technique called Layer Amplification Method ( LAM ) , he claim to have observe a second woman behind the portrait . “ We can now analyze exactly what is happening inside the stratum of the paint and we can peel like an onion plant all the layer of the painting , ” he toldBBC News .
The proficiency is non - invading , meaning that it does not make any damage to the house painting by penetrating it or altering it in any way . The Mona Lisa was subjected to a series of acute lights , and a powerful camera picked up on the tiny changes in the variation in the way of life these beams of illumination reflected and spread off the surface .
Each layer of blusher added to the original canvas would bring forth relief – that is , a little “ bump ” rise up from the airfoil . These bumps would be build up upon time and sentence again , mean that the final painting would have hold back many previous layers of paint beneath the open . Cotte aver that LAM can detect these intricate , okay layers beneath the surface by quantify the miniscule change in how various oftenness of light bounce off these gibbousness .
These mo reflections were used to reconstruct the various hidden stratum of the painting , and Cotte ’s finale are already send shockwaves through the art history world . Before it was painted over , another detailed portrait of a different woman can be regard , one without the hallmark smiling . This would intend , according to Cotte , that this reconstructed cleaning lady could be the original Lisa , and that the final paint womanhood we all see today is not Mona Lisa .
For the last six tenner , the Mona Lisa has been subject to multiple scientific examinations , let in those using infrared light and other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum . Cotte claim that LAM canpenetrate far deeperinto the layers of the house painting than former investigation could .
Although the identity of the painted char is somewhat open to interpretation , most art historians agree that Leonardo was indeed painting Lisa Gherardini , the wife of a silk merchandiser from Florence . However , Martin Kemp , Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford , is unconvinced that the “ hidden ” item reveal the dependable identity of the sitter in the house painting .
“ I do not retrieve there are these discreet stages which represent different portrait . I see it as more or less a continuous process of evolution . I am absolutely confident that the Mona Lisa is Lisa , ” he toldBBC News .
The Louvre has yet to officially remark on these new findings , but the new mystery is sure to only heighten machination in the famous portrait , todayworth $ 782 million(£520 million ) .
