Why does the Mona Lisa smile?

Question

Why is that question asked a lot? Whats the big deal? But why is the Mona Lisa smiling? Why do you think the Mona Lisa is smiling?

Answer 1

Italian Food

Answer 2

Leonardo da Vinci kept telling her dirty jokes while she was posing for the portrait.

Answer 3

until now some artsiest see the mona lisa smile and the others see her cry and that,s the weird thing in the mona lisa .  

Answer 4

Because she knows the Jonas Brothers are as cool as a wet f**t in gym class.  

Answer 5

Some people question if "she" is really a "he"  Maybe she/he is smiling because she/he is the only one knows the truth.  

Answer 6

idk srry

Answer 7

She just farted

Answer 8

It's the "natural" thing to do for a portraiture, don't you think?!  

My question has always been, "Why does the Mona Lisa command so much attention?  She's not even particularly, if at ALL, pretty?"  Didn't Leonardo have ANYONE else to spend so much time on?  Or was she his paramour?

Edit to UncleBen:  Sorry!  It wasn't Michaelangelo that painted the Mona Lisa.  And Michaelangelo is his FIRST NAME.  It was. . . .Leonardo DaVinci!

Answer 9

Chuck Noris is the reason why Mona Lisa is smiling

Answer 10

She knows something very important that you don't

Answer 11

Because that is the vision the artist had in his mind.  Regardless of what the model looked like while posing it is what the artist sees in his mind that he puts on canvas. He may have just had a wonderful day and felt like a smile was appropriate for the painting.  Only the artist knows the truth.  

Answer 12

G They really knew their drugs in those days.

Answer 13

It is uncommon for anyone below the 1930's era to smile in a picture/portrait. If you look at many 1800's photographs, you will notice that they are in a more natural state than smiling. Think about it: most people just smile during a photo because it's a given, but sometimes people just arn't happy.

So, the Mona was painted sometime in the 1500's/1600's right, then it's odd for her to be smiling. That's why it's such a phenomonon. But again... her smiling is odd to some researchers. It isn't a 100% happy smile. It has mixed feelings - sadness, worry, uncomftorable motions and whatnot.

But to answer your questions, for nearly 500 years, people have been gazing at Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of the Mona Lisa with a sense of bafflement. First she is smiling. Then the smile fades. A moment later the smile returns only to disappear again. What is with this lady's face? How did the great painter capture such a mysterious expression and why haven't other artists copied it? The Italians have a word to explain Mona Lisa's smile: sfumato. It means blurry, ambiguous and up to the imagination.

But now, according to Dr. Margaret Livingstone, a Harvard neuroscientist, there is another, more concrete explanation. Mona Lisa's smile comes and goes, she says, because of how the human visual system is designed, not because the expression is ambiguous.

Livingstone is an authority on visual processing, with a special interest in how the eye and brain deal with different levels of contrast and illumination. Recently, while writing on a book about art and the brain, an editor advised her to learn more about art history. "I got a copy of E.H. Gombich's 'The Story of Art' in which he basically said, 'I know you've seen this painting a hundred times but look at it, just look at it.' And so that's what I did."

In staring at the picture, Livingstone said she noticed a kind of flickering quality. "But it wasn't until later when I was riding my bike home that I realized what it was," she said. "The smile came and went as a function of where my eyes were." A scientific explanation for the elusive smile was suddenly clear. The human eye has two distinct regions for seeing the world, Livingstone said. A central area, called the fovea, is where people see colors, read fine print, pick out details. The peripheral area, surrounding the fovea, is where people see black and white, motion and shadows.

When people look at a face, their eyes spend most of the time focused on the other person's eyes, Livingstone said. Thus when a person's center of gaze is on Mona Lisa's eyes, his less accurate peripheral vision is on her mouth. And because peripheral vision is not interested in detail, it readily picks up shadows from Mona Lisa's cheekbones.

These shadows suggest and enhance the curvature of a smile. But when the viewer's eyes go directly to Mona Lisa's mouth, his central vision does not see the shadows, she said. "You'll never be able to catch her smile by looking at her mouth," Livingstone said. The flickering quality - with smile present and smile gone - occurs as people move their eyes around Mona Lisa's face.

The actress Geena Davis also shows the Mona Lisa effect, Livingstone said, always seeming to be smiling, even when she isn't, because her cheek bones are so prominent.

"I do not mean to take away the mystery of Leonardo," Livingstone said. "He was a genius who captured something from real life that rarely gets noticed in real life. It took the rest of us 500 years to figure it out."

It is also not clear, she said, why other painters have not copied the effect more often. To make a good counterfeit Mona Lisa, one would have to paint the mouth by looking away from it, she said. How anyone can do that remains a mystery.

Answer 14

Allegedly she was a new mother. They did some x-rays and discovered she was wearing a gauzy kind of robe that only new mothers wore.

Answer 15

So you don't notice how ugly she is!