“Unlocking the Enigma: Discover the Hidden Mysteries Behind the Mona Lisa’s Smile”
order to chase away the melancholy that painting often seems to give to portraits. And in this [portrait] of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing that, to one who sees it, it was a thing more divine than human, and it was considered a marvellous thing for being no different than life.”
Unfortunately for Vasari’s account, imaging of the painting shows that the sitter did not originally smile after the first brush strokes. Da Vinci later corrected his earlier work, applying more than forty layers of pigment and lacquer, a distinctive feature of his sfumato technique. It is not possible to discern if the artist had a change of heart, or gradually developed his anatomical studies before reaching the desired perfection for his subject’s smile.
As a brief aside, contemporary commentators, however, question whether Mona Lisa’s expression was at all voluntary with the subject of the painting perhaps suffering from hypothyroidism. In a September of 2018 report by the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, authored by Prof Mandeep R. Mehra, at Harvard Medical School, Prof Mehra and his colleague Hilary Campbell, University of California, Santa Barbara, performed a diagnosis based on signs such as Mona Lisa’s yellowish skin, her thinning hairline and eyebrows, and a slight goitre under the chin. Mehra and Campbell concluded that Lisa may have suffered from peripartum hypothyroidism, a common condition made worse by the Florentine diet of the time, poor in iodine.
Consequences of this condition include a psychomotor deficit and weakness in facial muscles, which may explain Mona Lisa’s barely perceivable smile. This medical diagnosis makes for an intriguing hypothesis, which prompted us to compare Mona Lisa’s expression with those of the other three women portrayed by Leonardo in his career. Of these, La Belle Ferronière and Ginevra Benci display a rather unfazed expression, bordering on stern. Only the Lady with the Hermine displays a hint of a smile. From this, it may simply be that Leonardo preferred his portrait subjects not to display too open emotions, as subtlety and ambiguity made for more interesting subjects.
