I can recall sitting in history class being told Mona Lisa didn’t have eyebrows. My professor explained they had different standards of beauty 500 years ago. I believed it. My teenage mind conjured up weird scenarios in which girls at my school began re-adopting this trend. Bell bottoms… Modrobes… it didn’t seem too far-fetched.

My mind wandered further. I imagined women in Shakespearean times taking time out of their day to shave their eyebrows. I imagined conversations among women about how often this needed to be done. I forced it all to make sense and eventually it did. Every time I saw the Mona Lisa, I was reminded of the Naked-Face Beauty Hypothesis. That’s not an official hypothesis … but its what I call it.

In 2006, a multi-spectrum scan revealed the existence of one hair of the eyebrow and hints to the vivid colours hidden behind the years of varnish.

In 2012, a cheap knockoff was revealed to be the work of Leonardo’s apprentice. The Prado Museum discovered a colourful, unfinished background behind some black over-paint. Chemical testing confirmed it was added sometime after 1750.

Infra-red and x-ray analysis confirmed identical details beneath the paint layers. This revealed a parallel process between master and pupil.

“…supporting the hypothesis of a workshop “duplicate” produced at the same time and with direct access to the gradual process of creation of Leonardo’s original work.” — Study of the Prado Museum’s copy of La Gioconda

Digital Restoration Process

The Prado colours and eyebrows were used as reference for the digital restoration of da Vinci’s original.

Using a high resolution (C2RMF) scan I reduced — but didn’t remove — the appearance of cracks (eliminating them entirely would have made the image flat and uninteresting). I morphed the Prado ‘copy’ to match the original and used the colour replacement tool in Photoshop. Everything except the background and the intricate lacework was easy to replace.