WHY IS THE "MONA LISA"SMILLING

Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pine wood in the year 1506.
Never in the history of Art has one painting been so admired. This is due largely to the enigmatic smile, which has caused much speculation. He recorded in his notebooks the records of model sittings; but nowhere can be found any records of the Mona Lisa model sitting. Why is that? Who posed for him?DR: LILLIAN SCHWARTZ Labs suggests that Leonardo painted himself, and was able to support her theory by analyzing the facial features of Leonardo's face and that of the famous painting, She digitized both the self-portrait of the artist and the Mona Lisa. She flipped the self portrait and merged the two images together using a computer. She noticed the features of the face aligned perfectly! You may draw your own conclusion. Please leave feedback in our guestbook.

Lillian Schwartz is a pioneer in computer graphics and computer art. Her work is represented in major art collections and museums around the world, and has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Georges Pompidou, Centre Beauborg, and Grand Palais museums in Paris. A frequent lecturer at universities throughout North America, she has been visiting or adjunct professor at Kean College, the University of Maryland, New York University, Princeton University, Rutgers University and the School of Visual Arts. For many years she has been a consultant in computer graphics at ATT&T's Bell Labs. In her book The Computer Artist's Handbook she presents the problem construct: Who is really portrayed in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"?

This book is considered Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain for the computer age, which shows the non artist how a computer can unleash creativity, and the artist how to use it to make new kinds of art. This eye-opening book covers concepts, techniques and applications across a whole range of artistic media and disciplines, from drawing and painting through graphics, animation, and video to computer-controlled art and computerized analysis of the art of the past. With helpful analogies to traditional art forms and a rich array of up-to-the-minute advice and examples; it offers a conceptual and hands-on approach that can be used with any computer from the home PC with simple paint and draw programs to an elaborate graphic workstation. Published by W.W.Norton, 1992 New York, London.