What Is It With Mona Lisa's Smile? It's You!

What Is It With Mona Lisa's Smile?
It's You!

November 21, 2000

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

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.

Dr. 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, Dr. 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, Dr.
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, Dr. 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," Dr. 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, Dr.
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," Dr.
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.

The New York Times on the Web
http://nytimes.com/2000/11/21/science/21MONA.html

Scientists Figure Out Why Mona Lisa Smiles

By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 15, 2005 6:15 PM ET

The mysterious half-smile that has intrigued viewers of the Mona Lisa for centuries isn't really that difficult to interpret, Dutch researchers said Thursday.

She was smiling because she was happy — 83 percent happy, to be exact, according to scientists from the University of Amsterdam.

In what they viewed as a fun demonstration of technology rather than a serious experiment, the researchers scanned a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece and subjected it to cutting-edge "emotion recognition" software, developed in collaboration with the University of Illinois.

The result showed the painting's famous subject was 83 percent happy, 9 percent disgusted, 6 percent fearful and 2 percent angry. She was less than 1 percent neutral, and not at all surprised.

Leonardo began work on the painting in 1503, and it now hangs in the Louvre in Paris.

The work, also known as "La Gioconda," is believed to have portrayed the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The title is a play on her husband's name, and also means "the jolly lady" in Italian.

Harro Stokman, a professor at the University of Amsterdam involved in the experiment, said the researchers knew the results would be unscientific — the software isn't designed to register subtle emotions. So it couldn't detect the hint of sexual suggestion or disdain many have read into Mona Lisa's eyes.

In addition, the technology is designed for use with modern digital films and images, and subjects first need to be scanned in a neutral emotionless state to accurately detect their current emotion.

Lead researcher Nicu Sebe took the challenge as seriously as he could, using the faces of 10 women of Mediterranean ancestry to create a composite image of a neutral expression. He then compared that to the face in the painting, scoring it on the basis of six emotions: happiness, surprise, anger, disgust, fear and sadness.

"Basically, it's like casting a spider web over the face to break it down into tiny segments," Stokman said. "Then you look for minute differences in the flare of the nostril or depth of the wrinkles around the eyes."

Stokman said with a reading of 83 percent, it's clear happiness was the woman's main emotion.

Biometrics experts not involved with the experiment said the results were interesting even if they aren't the last word on the Mona Lisa.

"Facial recognition technology is advancing rapidly, but emotional recognition is really still in its infancy," said Larry Hornak, director of the Center for Identification Technology Research at West Virginia University.

"It sounds like they did try to use a data set, even if it was small, and that's typical of work in an area like this that's relatively new. It's an interesting result," he said.

Stokman said he knew the University of Amsterdam effort won't prove or disprove controversial theories about the painting. One is that it was actually a self-portrait of Leonardo himself as a woman.

"But who knows, in 30, 40, 50 years, maybe they'll be able to tell what was on her mind," Stokman said.

Hornak agreed the idea was entertaining.

"It's always fun to apply technology to areas of public interest, and sometimes you can come up with results that are very illuminating," he said.

Jim Wayman, a biometrics researcher at San Jose State University agreed.

"It's hocus pocus, not serious science," Wayman said. "But it's good for a laugh, and it doesn't hurt anybody.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/