According to a study led by neuroscientists from the University of Amsterdam, the smile of The Gioconda -O Mona Lisa– painted by da Vinci between 1513 and 1519 exists, although it is not perceptible to the naked eye. Experts were able to find that the woman in the painting – Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco Bartolomeo de Giocondo – shows 83% happiness on her face. And they also detected other emotions: 9% disgust, 6% fear and 2% anger.
The researchers analyzed the Renaissance work from a digital emotional recognition program that reproduces the perception cycle of the brain, identifying changes in people’s neutral expressions and interpreting them according to the emotions it knows. Once the emotion is identified, the brain creates an illusion that helps confirm an interpretation, according to the BBC.
In the case of La Gioconda, her smile appears hidden or barely outlined, but even so whoever contemplates her interprets that she is trying to make a smile of happiness, perhaps because she brings together other characteristics related to the expression of joy, such as the widening of her nostrils or the formation of wrinkles under the eyes. In this way, when noticing these changes through vision, the mind issues a final verdict, even without the need to see a well-defined smile.
One of the conclusions of the study is that the human brain has evolved to capture any change in facial expression, however minimal. Thus, the human being is superior to the machine and manages to detect emotional traits although they are hidden under a neutral expression, a distinctive social ability.
From the beginning of its creation, the Renaissance were surprised by that captivating smile, but it was only in the 19th century that the poet and playwright Théophile Gautier began to raise this question. Some time later, the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud conjectured that the smile of happiness was reminiscent of his mother, from whom Da Vinci separated early.
In parallel to this research, another original argument circulates to justify the perception of the “attempt” to smile in the work of the Renaissance creator: after years of scientific research, the scientist developed a technique in which he constructed subtle expressions thanks to the application of thin layers of dilute pigment.
With this technique, known as sfumato, the painter generated a face whose smile was not perceptible to central vision, but which emitted recognition signals captured through peripheral vision. These signals, usually distributed in blurred areas of his paintings, also cause the brain to focus on the face of your object and not on the landscape in its background.
Da Vinci developed this technique during his last years, starting in 1513, and kept the painting until his death, as if it were his laboratory: over the years he experimented with new ways of graduating the shadows, sometimes with his fingers, and This is how he managed to make his Mona Lisa smile in an elusive way. Somehow, the work and its creator aged together. Today, in unison, they continue to intrigue the world.
Source From: Ambito
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