10 bizarre things you have to know about Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’

We all know the very popular painting made by  Leonardo Da Vinci. Yes, we are talking here about the ‘Mona Lisa’. The painting that was a mystery and still is to this day. Starting from the fascinating smile the lady has to the painting being stolen before, to much more interesting stuff you'll see here. So, Let's see the top 10 things that we need to know about Mona Lisa:

10 | the lady behind the painting

No one figured the identity of the lady in the photo even of the painting is named "Mona Lisa". Some say that she's an Italian lady. Her name is Lisa Maria de Gherardini (aka Lisa del Giocondo) and she was 24 years old at the time. She was a middle-class citizen. The painting was made as an order from her husband (yes, she was married).

09 | Her smile

You might think the lady in the oiled painting was happy but after re-looking at it again, you'll change your mind. So many people tried to figure out the mood she was in at the time the painting was made. You simply can't tell whether she's happy, sad or even bored. This will be a guess to take.

08 | The secret codes

Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage zoomed in the painting as much as they could, and they found out many letters in it. No one can tell what these letters mean. Yet, some letters were easy to guess. Like the "LV" that was found in the lady's right eye which stands for the painter's name "Leonardo da Vinci. What's mysterious here is the fact that Leonardo da Vinci needed to put such letters in which the naked eye can't see.

07 | The mysterious landscape

Another mystery that was not fully cracked in the painting was the vista behind the lady. There's a valley, there are a bridge, stones, and some trees. This was not enough to tell which place the painting was made in. Yet, some historians figured it out, as they claim. They suggested that the bridge is the Ponte Gobbo or Ponte Vecchio (“Old Bridge”). It is situated in Bobbio, a small village in a hilly country south of Piacenza in northern Italy.

06 | A hidden painting within the painting

Da Vinci was so brilliant that he painted a whole new painting in the Mona Lisa portrait without us realizing that until 2006. When a Canadian team used laser imaging on the portrait of Mona Lisa and finding out a lace that is drawn on Mona Lisa's dress, and a blanket that covers her from her stomach to her knees. Yep, it's like Da Vinci new how to turn some layers off back in the day.

Another French team used another method called the "layer amplification" method. This method can be seen as a "ctrl + z" thing. In other words, you can see by this method how this painting was made since the start. The shock was that they found another FOUR paintings underneath the Mona Lisa one. One of them was a painting of a younger lady with an obvious smile.

05 | Her gaze

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa was also fascinating in another way. Lots of those who saw the painting in real life noticed that if you look at it from any angle or distance, Mona Lisa will be staring at you. Any corner you look at her from, the painting will be like it's looking at you, stares at you. This is just another thing that makes Mona Lisa fascinating with her beautiful stare.

04 | Mona Lisa was pregnant

Looking carefully at the painting, you can see that the lady puts her hand right on her stomach. If you ever saw a pregnant lady sitting near or next to you, you'll realize that Mona Lisa was pregnant at the time the painting was drawn. She also had a child before the painting was done. Meaning that she had at least two kids.

03 | Timeless beauty, a beauty that never fades away

Mona Lisa has the perfect chin to head ration. Her face parts are also perfectly aligned (the nose, mouth, the eyes, and the chin). She has what artists call "the golden ration". It means that her appeal is so close to perfection.

02 | The return to home is a must

According to an Italian employee named Vincenzo Perugia, the painting shouldn't be in France's Louvre museum. He stated that Napoleon Bonaparte stole the painting from Italy and it shall be back to its homeland. A fail attempt by him to steal the painting and returning it to "home" was a big failure. The theft happened in 1911 and it lasted for two years. Until it was given back to France in 1913.

01 | What would Mona Lisa look like now?

In 2016, a creative team, led by British digital artist Quentin Devine, included a photographer, a stylist, and a makeup artist. They tried to recreate the Mona Lisa portrait by their photography skills, and they kinda succeeded at their mission as you can see from the photo above.


Another attempt led by the makeup artist Yuya Mika, to make herself look like the model in the Mona Lisa painting and she honestly was even more satisfying than the British team mentioned above. Here are her photos: