Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting in the world. In fact, according to Wikipedia, it is “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.”
It is no doubt then, that it is protected by a bullet proof casing at the Louvre Museum in Paris and is worth around $1 billion, though some experts say that it is invaluable.
Among many enigmas about this portrait, that have made experts scratch their heads, one was that, Mona Lisa doesn’t seem to have any clearly visible eyelashes or eyebrows! How can that be?
Well, after 3,000 hours of examining the painting, an engineer from Paris claims to have the answer and it is as lacklustre as it can be. He claims that the portrait did have visible eyelashes and eyebrows originally but over the years, they have disappeared due to over cleaning and reworking several times.
I had always felt that something was off about that face and today it was confirmed. It was due to the lack of those eyelashes and eyebrows. Guess you learn something new everyday after all!
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3668700/Solved-Why-Mona-Lisa-doesnt-have-eyebrows.html
Maybe he wanted the woman he depicted to have shaved her eyelashes and eyebrows.
who knows!
I saw it at the museum. You couldn't get very near it.
yeah, the security is pretty tight. It is literally considered invaluable!
Lol
"TIL That The Mona Lisa Did Indeed Have Clearly Visible Eyelashes Or Eyebrows"
https://steemit.com/til/@surpassinggoogle/til-that-the-mona-lisa-did-indeed-have-clearly-visible-eyelashes-or-eyebrows
haha! I see someone has written about it earlier. How was I supposed to know? :P :P
Don't worry. That user was few times flagged for compulsive tag spam before ;-)
yeah, read the comments on that one ;)
There was also a thing from a while back that it might actually be some sort of self portrait of da vinci.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/leonardo-da-vincis-mona-lisa-self-portrait/story?id=9662394
I see that this article is back from 2010. I wonder if they found something in their investigation.
I believe you got it with the cleaning - paint was made from poultry eggs and it is nigh on impossible to restrict the degradation of fine brushwork.
yup, that sounds like the most logical explanation to the mystery.