Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece known as the Mona Lisa is the world's most famous painting. As such, you might be surprised to find out it's a rather small portrait, and so many people go to the Louvre to see it that you can't really get close enough to study it. But that's okay, because we have plenty of photographs. We can admire her smile, her eyes, and ...where's her eyebrows? Did Lisa del Giocondo, the model for the portrait, have her brows plucked out? Or did Leonardo just leave them out of the picture?
August Moon takes us through serious research on the subject of the Mona Lisa's eyebrows, and what they are supposed to look like. In the process, we find that many of the world's greatest paintings are not what they seem on the surface. That surface is constantly being messed with in the hopes of keeping the paintings clean and undamaged, which still ends up damaging them. And we get a lesson in what really makes the Mona Lisa such a unique and memorable portrait. -via Laughing Squid
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