Mona Lisa's smile is a mystery. She smiles like a child. It's as if she's teasing or blackmailing some one. It's as if her smile says that "Yeah, I know it. I know the truth. But I won't tell you." It's strange. According to me Mona Lisa was just a imaginary person, who did not exist, ever. Her smile, her eyes are hypnotizing. It can catch anyone's attention and hold you for a long time! She looks evil, jinxed rather.
Leonardo da Vinci have been painted from 1503 to 1506, four years.Seeing that the eyes had that luster and watery sheen which are always seen in life, and around them were all those rosy and pearly tints, as well as the lashes, which can not be represented without the greatest subtlety. The eyebrows, though his having shown the manner in which the hairs spring from the flesh, here more close, there more scanty, and curve according to pores of the skin, could not be more natural. The nose, with its beautiful nostrils, rosy and tender appeared to be alive. The mouth, with its parting, and with its ends united by the red of the lips to the flesh tints of the face, seemed, in truth, to be not colors but flesh. In the pit of the throat, if one gazed upon it intently, could be seen the beating of the pulse. Mona Lisa was very different from other portraits made until that time, because she was painted sitting down and not as a bust or drawn in profile like Italian painters did. The portrait was larger and included more of the sitter’s body. This invention of Leonardo's influenced the development of a completely new way of portrait drawing which was followed by many until the 19th century.

The other important Leonardo's invention that gives the painting its mysterious character is the so-called sfumato technique. It means painting shadows with subtle shade transitions created with fingers that produced a special hazy effect on the painting.

The third important feature of Mona Lisa is the look of the sitter which is directed at the viewer. This 'trick' has already been used by the northern painters when painting portraits and self portraits. One of the fist portraitist, who painted a sitter looking directly at the viewer was Netherlandish painter Jan Van Eyck. In this way a completely different communication with the beholder is made, for he is directly addressed by the 'image'. The viewer is not merely an observer - as he is with other three-quarter and profile portraits of the northern-Renaissance art until Van Eyck - but becomes a part of the story.

The painting was analysed by a University of Amsterdam computer using "emotion recognition" software. It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, New Scientist magazine was told. The computer rated features such as the curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes.

This focus picks up shadows from the Mona Lisa's cheekbones, which suggests a curvature of a smile, but when the viewer's eyes then shift to her mouth, the shadows of her mouth elude the viewer. The smile appears present and then gone because of the visual processing. In particular, that of the peripheral area surrounding the fovea, where individuals see black and white, motion and shadows.

Therefore, Mona Lisa's smile is the outcome of one's peripheral vision based on the facial contours.

	Photo of Buriano Bridge.
	Detail of bridge in the background.
	Detail of gravel in Leonardo's The Virgin and The Child with Saint Ann
	Left background detail.
	Right background detail.