French scientist Pascal Cotte held a press conference in Shanghai on Tuesday that might shake the art world, according to ABC News. He claims to have uncovered a hidden portrait beneath the painting of the Mona Lisa. For years people have wondered about the mysteries that surround the Mona Lisa, arguably Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous painting.
There is controversy about where or what she is looking at, her haughty, yet seductive smile, but most of all her identity. People have suggested she was one of Da Vinci's lovers, others say it was Da Vinci himself dressed as a woman. The most common theory is that it is Lisa Gheradini, the wife of a silk merchant in Florence, however Cotte disagrees after his discovery.
He has been studying the painting for the last 10 years, and used a Layer Amplification Method, a method using intense lights, to be able to fully analyze it, according to the Huffington Post.
"We can now analyze exactly what is happening inside the layers of the paint and we can peel like an onion all the layers of the painting. We can reconstruct all the chronology of the creation of the painting," Cotte told the BBC. "When I finished the reconstruction of Lisa Gherardini, I was in front of the portrait and she is totally different to Mona Lisa today. This is not the same woman."
Cotte claims to have found two more images further below that, one of a shadowy outline of a portrait, with a larger nose, head, hands, and smaller lips, and one similar to the Mona Lisa, but with sketches of a pearl necklace, according to BBC News.
Martin Kemp, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford, is skeptical of the findings, stating, "I do not think there are these discrete stages which represent different portraits. I see it as more or less a continuous process of evolution. I am absolutely convinced that the Mona Lisa is Lisa," according to BBC.
Whether or not the Mona Lisa is Lisa Gheradini or not, one thing is for certain: Cotte's discovery has only managed to shroud the painting in even more mystery.
Cotte's research is on display at the exhibition Da Vinci - The Genius.
