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Camera 'reveals' Mona Lisa's missing eyebrows

Art historians have come up with countless theories over the years to explain why the Mona Lisa appears to have no eyebrows.

But now Pascal Cotte, a Parisian engineer, claims to have the answer after spending 3,000 hours studying digital scans of Leonardo Da Vinci's enigmatic 16th-century portrait.

Using a high-definition camera, he claims to have uncovered the fine brush strokes of eyebrows and lashes Leonardo originally gave the Florentine merchant's wife.

Over the centuries, however, the delicate lines either faded or were wiped off during careless restoration, Mr Cotte said at a Leonardo exhibition in San Francisco.

"If you look closely at Mona Lisa's left eye you can clearly see that the cracks around it have slightly disappeared," he said. "That may be because one day a curator or restorer cleaned the eye, and in doing so probably removed the eyelashes and eyebrow."
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)