For centuries, people have asked, who is Mona Lisa and why is she smiling in the famous painting by Leonardo DaVinci.
French engineer Pascal Cotte helped answer so many questions when he was invited by the Louvre to photograph the Mona Lisa more than 15 years ago using a new technique he developed, a type of multispectral imaging.
He continues to pour over the images and now he believes he has the answer to another question: where is that landscape is behind the Mona Lisa's shoulders?
In 2004, Louvre (where the Mona Lisa hangs) gave Lumiere technology founder Pascal Cotte access to the painting because he had developed a new way of analysing the layers.
“You have to understand that for many years, all the museums in the world used infrared technique or x-ray or fluorescence technique but this is really insufficient to analyse what’s inside the layer of paint," Cotte tells Jesse Mulligan.
His method is called the Layer Amplification Method (LAM).
“The layer of paint is less than one millimetre and in this you have chronology, all the story of the creation of painting in this one millimetre of thickness. So this is what I do with my new technique, is to amplify what’s inside.
“Because infra-red technique used by all the museums in fact penetrate too much deep inside the layer of paint and miss what’s most important, is this chronology of all the brush strokes and all the under-drawing and spolvero and all the creation technique used by Leonardo.”
‘The real face’ of the Mona Lisa?
In 2015, he claimed to have discovered “the real portrait, the real face” of Lisa Gherardini, who is widely believed to be the subject of Mona Lisa.
Cotte theorises that what may have started as a portrait of a real woman turned into another idealistic figure - the Mona Lisa we see today.
Mona Lisa's portrait was digitised with Lumiere Technology's high-resolution multispectral camera. The data from this digitisation revealed for the first time the spolvero (a drawing transfer technique) of the portrait. Photo: Pascal Cotte, Lionel Simonot / Journal of Cultural Heritage
“This is not my job to tell you who it is, there’s many art historians that can explain, like Roberto Zapperi, that explains that is in fact a portrait of a mother for the child of Giuliano de’ Medici.
“But in fact, I’m an engineer, not an artist, so I don’t know. What I am sure is that I give you a picture that can show you that this is no more Lisa Gherardini.
“It was more feminine portrait, the mouth was more small, and the glance looking on the right, a different position and of course a totally different dress. Because at this time, in 1503, there was no fashion… so if you were bourgeoise or noble woman you have to be dressed like this … with such kind of dress … and you have to attach your hair in a net.”
Moreover, he claims the plank of poplar the Mona Lisa is painted on was used by Leonardo for another Madonna-style project.
Art historians and experts are divided on Cotte's claims about the Mona Lisa. Some of his findings were published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.
Digital reconstruction of what engineer Pascal Cotte claims to have found underneath the current Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. Photo: YouTube / Pascal Cotte
A cunning a plot in the landscape?
The speculation has been that the landscape depicts the Marche region or between Milan and Genoa, but Cotte argues his LAM technology has unveiled hidden traces of the Caprona Tower.
“Finding this tower inside the Mona Lisa is not really a surprise, it’s a surprise because the technique allows you to discover it.”
The tower still stands today in the province of Pisa in Italy.
Other points of reference in the background support this theory, he says, including what was believed to be a wide dry path over Mona Lisa’s shoulder.
Cotte theorises it actually depicts a dried-up Arno river in Pisa.
About 1503, when it’s believed Leonardo was painting the Mona Lisa, he was also said to have collaborated with Niccolò Machiavelli on a scheme to divert the river’s water, Cotte says.
Cutting off Pisa’s access to the water supply would have been a geopolitical power grab in the war, he explains.
While the plan was abandoned, perhaps it is forever enshrined in the painting if Cotte’s theory proves true.
Pascal Cotte released a book in 2019 with more information about his findings, called Lumiere on The Mona Lisa: Hidden Portraits.
