The Mona Lisa is an oil painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, which is housed in the Louvre Museum in France, which welcomes 6 million visitors every year. In fact, most people don't feel the greatness of the Mona Lisa at all, or even Da Vinci's simple naturalistic view of painting. As for Mona Lisa's smile, there are even more questions: Is she really smiling all the time?
Unlike other figure paintings, the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows and eyelashes, and the overall appearance is natural and harmonious, reflecting a kind of indifference that sees through everything in the world. However, the mystery of the Mona Lisa lies in her smile, which at first glance does not seem to be smiling, but when you look at her eyes and the shadows on her face, you will find that she is actually smiling. Scholars have said that the Mona Lisa's smile contains 83% happiness, 9% disgust, 6% fear, and 2% anger.
Leonardo da Vinci on Painting once said that a good painter has two main objects to express -- the figure and his mental activity. The former is easier, the latter is harder. The Mona Lisa in the painting is the best embodiment of Leonardo da Vinci's theory, her eyes are soft, her face is smiling, and she shows the unprecedented humanity in painting. In addition, in order to pursue the real expression effect, Leonardo da Vinci repeatedly modified and portrayed the portrait. Later, the Mona Lisa was confirmed by modern X-rays, with more than twenty layers of oil, and almost no brushstrokes were seen in the picture—all the traces of painting were carefully smoothed out.
The birth of a great work often requires the painter's genius creation and countless revisions, and Mona Lisa's smile is not as simple as it seems. Generally speaking, people's smiles are mainly manifested in the corners of the eyes and the corners of the mouth, but Da Vinci painted these parts vaguely, using the function of the human visual system to deliberately give people unlimited space for reverie, making people think that the Mona Lisa has always been smiling.
Some experts have proposed turning the Mona Lisa upside down, and it will be time to see if she can continue to smile mysteriously. However, after the reversal, the Mona Lisa seemed to have changed her face, her smile had disappeared, and all people could feel were two burning eyes. The 19th-century British critic Walter Pat once said that the Mona Lisa died many times like a vampire, knew many great secrets of the world, and she could dive into the deep sea to take away the days she had lived.
In addition, relevant scholars also found mysterious characters in Mona Lisa's eyeballs, which resembled both the word "LV" and the letter "CE", and the number "72" could also be seen on the arch behind her. In later days, Mona Lisa's paintings revealed a series of hidden animal heads, including lions, apes, buffaloes and snakes. Leonardo da Vinci's purpose for creating the Mona Lisa is unknown, and the only thing we can do is to look forward to the day in the future when the mysteries of the Mona Lisa can be solved.