Hidden Portrait 'Found Under Mona Lisa', says French Scientist

Second PortraitBeneath the Top Layer of Famous Painting

According to BBC reports, the art world is bustling with claims made by a French scientist who has discovered a portrait of another woman beneath the top layer of the most famous painting of the world, the Mona Lisa. According to Newsweek, a Paris-based company, Lumiere Technology, working closely with galleries and museums, co-founded by Pascal Cotte, digitised in fine art pieces, had been researching Da Vinci’s signature piece for 10 years utilising a technology known as the Layer amplification Method – LAM.

It involves shining `intense’ light to a painting and then measuring the bounced back reflection to scale what is beneath it. Its website claims to have digitized works by Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Claude Renoir and Vincent Van Gogh. BBC which is airing a documentary regarding the discovery reports thatCotte had gained access by the Louvre to the Mona Lisa in 2004.Cotte states that underneath the surface of the Mona Lisa is an image of a woman looking off to the side and not straight ahead with various physical characteristics than the model which tends to smile down on the crowds at the Louvre.

Image Lacks Famed Direct Gaze & Smile

Cotte informs that the hidden image lacks both the famed direct gaze and the smile of Mona Lisa which was observed by projecting it to intense light. A camera which measured the light’s reflection enabled Cotte to reconstruct what had been created with each layer of paint.

The Telegraph notes that the hidden portrait, for instance displays a woman who has a bigger head, nose, hands and smaller lips. BBC informed an Oxford University art history professor that the newly discovered model was probably not the beginning of a completely different painting but an evolution of the final Mona Lisa wherein Da Vinci had kept the painting over the previous version till he received the result he desired. He has commented that he is convinced that the Mona Lisa is Lisa.

According to BBC, that analysed the painting, the Louvre on its part, had refrained from commenting since it was not part of the scientific team. The theory seems to be controversial and not without its critics It is claimed that the hidden portrait represents the original `Lisa’ and what we see is believed to be Lisa Gherardine, the wife of a Florentine merchant and is a different being altogether.

Mona Lisa – Topic of Various Scientific Examinations

However, emeritus professor of History of Art at the University of Oxford, Martin Kemp, who is quoted by the BBC, had informed that though the images shown by Cotte, portrays Da Vinci’s artistic process, they tend to represent an evolution in the creation of the Mona Lisa instead of separate paintings. The Mona Lisa has been the topic of various scientific examinations for more than half a century.

 Recent techniques comprised of infrared inspections together with multi-spectral scanning. Andrew Graham-Dixon, an art historian has made a BBC documentary known as The Secrets of the Mona Lisa, researching historical documents connected to the painting together with Cotte’s scientific discoveries. He informs that he has no doubts that this is definitely one of the stories of the century and there would possibly be some reluctance on the authorities at the Louvers in changing the title of the painting since that is what all have been talking about and it will be goodbye Mona Lisa, she is somebody else’.