For centuries, Leonardo Da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" has beguiled art buffs unable to resist speculating on its origins and meaning. Parisian engineer Pascal Cotte says he spent hours as a child, staring at the Mona Lisa the first time he saw it at the Louvre. He later used his scientific training in light and optics to develop a camera that would allow him to examine the object of his obsession. Cotte estimates that he spent 3,000 hours analyzing the data from the scans he made of the painting in the Louvre’s laboratory. Using sensors to detect light from both the visible spectrum and the infrared and ultraviolet ranges invisible to the human eye, his camera revealed several changes. First, Mona Lisa’s face was originally wider and the smile more expressive when Da Vinci painted them. In addition, she holds a blanket that has all but faded from view today. What surprised Cotte more than anything was that Mona Lisa had eyebrows and eyelashes (see photo above, before left and after right) in the original painting. Age, varnish and restorations performed later have resulted in a painting that all but obliterated both the eyebrows and eyelashes of the famous model. Since scanning the Mona Lisa, Cotte has made super-high-resolution photographs of more than 500 paintings, including works by Van Gogh, Brueghel, Courbet and other European masters. "To communicate our cultural heritage to our kids, we need to provide the maximum of information," Cotte said.
