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Is there a hidden drawing beneath the 'Mona Lisa'?

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180975947/

EXCERPTS: . . . Now, after taking a closer look at the beloved Renaissance masterpiece, researchers have found evidence that Leonardo da Vinci actually relied on a charcoal underdrawing to render the sitter’s mysterious features.

As Sarah Cascone reports for artnet News, scientist Pascal Cotte—who detailed his findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Cultural Heritage -- started studying the Mona Lisa in 2004, when the Louvre asked him to digitize it with his high-resolution, multispectral Lumiere Technology camera. Colette then used the layer amplification method, which allows scientists to amplify weak infrared signals and reveal new details about paintings, to detect traces of the hidden underdrawing.

Ultimately, Colette captured more than 1,650 photographic scans. He’s spent the past 15 years analyzing this data with the help of co-author Lionel Simonot, a physicist at the University of Poitiers. “These discoveries increase and increase the mystery of [the Mona Lisa’s] creation,” Cotte tells Express’ Josh Saunders. “In the end we understand that it is the work of a very long ‘creative act’—which spans more than a decade and in several stages.”

The new analysis suggests that Leonardo used a technique called spolvero, which enabled him to transfer sketches from paper to canvas using charcoal dust, to paint the Mona Lisa.

[...] This isn’t the first time that Cotte has identified hidden features beneath the Mona Lisa’s surface. In 2015, the scientist made headlines by claiming that Leonardo painted the likeness seen today over an earlier portrait of an entirely different woman. But many critics and scholars objected to this interpretation: Instead, art historian Martin Kemp told BBC News’ Roya Nikkhah, the details revealed by Cotte’s Lumiere Technology are likely a reflection of “a continuous process of evolution.” (MORE - details)
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