La Joconde

Mona Lisa once had eyebrows,

but not anymore! Why?

Mona Lisa

Even if you have seen the painting a hundred times, you may not have noticed that Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa has no clearly visible  eyebrows  

or  eyelashes .

They were there at some point

In 1568, Giorgio Vasari (often considered the first art historian) described Mona Lisa ’s eyebrows in detail in The Lives of the Artists : “The eyebrows could not be more natural , for t hey represent the way the hair grows in the skin —thicker in some places and thinner in others, following the pores of the skin.”

Why are they gone?

Some claim it was the highclass fashion of the time to pluck hair and remove eyebrows ; others maintain it is a proof that the painting was never finished.  

The real reason

In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra-detailed digital scans of the painting provide evidence that  Mona Lisa  was originally painted with eyelashes and eyebrows , but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning:

“If you look closely at Mona Lisa ’s eye you can clearly see that the cracks around the eye have slightly disappeared , and that may be explained that one day a curator or restorer cleaned the eye, and cleaning the eye, probably removed the eyelashes and eyebrow,” he said.