Flickering Smile

        The portrait was painted by Leonardo da Vinci about 500 years ago. It was originally called La Gioconda. This is thought to be the family name of the woman in the portrait, although no one is quite sure who the mystery woman is; the name Mona Lisa came later. It's also said that once he'd finished painting it, da Vinci was even more captivated by the portrait than by the lady herself. Leonardo apparently took the portrait with him on his travels to Milan, Rome and France. Now the Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre art gallery in France. Every year the picture attracts millions of visitors who love to stand and ponder the lady's beguiling expression. Is she smiling at us or not? Looks can sometimes be deceiving.
            What’s the deal with Mona Lisa’s smile? Harvard neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone is pretty sure she’s solved the puzzle. Presuming nothing, Livingstone reasoned that the famous portrait’s flickering smile is caused by the way we see. Our eyes use two separate regions to see. One is the fovea, a central area used to see colors and pick out details such as fine print. The area around the fovea is better at detecting motion, shadows, and stark, black and white contrasts.When we look at a person’s face, according to Livingstone, we usually focus centrally on the eyes. Gazing at Mona Lisa’s eyes, our less accurate peripheral vision notices the mouth, picking up shadows from the cheekbones. The shadows play visual tricks, hinting at the curve of a smile. But when we look directly at the mouth, our central vision doesn’t see the shadows, and so the smile suddenly disappears. As our eyes scan different parts of the portrait, Mona’s smile seems to fade in and out.            Did da Vinci intend to create this flickering smile effect? Perhaps, In any case, he was genius enough to paint shadows subtle enough to astound viewers for half a millennium. Meanwhile, Mona Lisa will keep smiling. Moreover, not.