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...Now, through the use of advanced X-ray technology, scientists have made a groundbreaking discovery that sheds light on Leonardo da Vinci's remarkable techniques.In a study recently [2023] published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers revealed that a rare compound, known as plumbonacrite, was found in the first layer of paint on the Mona Lisa. This compound, a byproduct of lead oxide, provided crucial evidence that Leonardo likely used lead oxide powder to thicken and hasten the drying of his paints.Lead researcher Victor Gonzalez explained how this compound, which has an orange color when mixed, was used in...

Witnesses said a man, who was wearing a wig and dressed as a woman, was rolling past Leonardo da Vinci's famous masterpiece in a wheelchair before suddenly leaping to his feet and launching a pie at the canvas.

Using digital manipulation, four classic paintings were transformed to reveal what the subjects would have looked like in real life. The artworks include the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, self-portraits by grandmasters Rembrandt and Raphael, and Thomas Gainsborough's The Blue Boy.

Environmental protest groups have been targeting art history's greatest treasures to raise awareness about climate change. Climate activists turned up the heat this year, decrying the global environmental crisis by targeting internationally renowned art museums’ greatest treasures—and leading many onlookers to wonder how their actions actually connect with the greater good. Just last week, protesters from Just Stop Oil glued themselves to Vermeer’s iconic Girl With a Pearl Earring in the latest of their ongoing art demonstrations, previously focused on the U.K. The same group blasted a Rolex store in London with orange paint less than 24 hours later. In...

PARIS (AP) — The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum and a global symbol of art, beauty and endurance, has withstood war, terror, and pandemic — but on Monday, it was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who say the institution is crumbling under the weight of mass tourism.It was an almost unthinkable sight: the home to works by Leonardo da Vinci and millennia of civilization’s greatest treasures — paralyzed by the very people tasked with welcoming the world to its galleries. Thousands of stranded and confused visitors, tickets in hand, were corralled into unmoving lines by I.M....

PARIS — Leonardo DaVinci's famous Mona Lisa has reportedly been retrofitted with laser eyes by security at the Louvre in response to attacks by activists attempting to vandalize the painting for attention. "Visitors have always remarked how Mona Lisa seems to be looking at them wherever they are standing," said Louvre head of security Dominique Javert while eating a baguette and smoking a cigarette in one of those long cigarette holder thingies. "Now, visitors should know that her piercing gaze comes equipped with a pair of 10-kilowatt laser blasters ready to vaporize anyone who would vandalize her." According to sources,...

Climate activists hurled soup on the Mona Lisa on Sunday morning at the Louvre museum in Paris

It’s enough to wipe the smile off her face. A pair of climate-change activists hurled pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa on Sunday at the Louvre Museum in Paris as onlookers gasped, shocking new video shows. “What is more important?” the crazed activists shouted in French. “Art or the right to have a healthy and sustainable food system?” The two nuts are members of the activist group called “Riposte Alimetaire,” or Food Response, which issued a statement saying the stunt was meant to highlight the need to protect the environment.

French farmers are using their tractors to set up road blockades and slow traffic across France to seek better remuneration for their produce, less red tape and protection against cheap importsTwo climate activists hurled soup Sunday at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris and shouted slogans advocating for a sustainable food system. This came amid protests by French farmers against several issues, including low wages. In a video posted on social media, two women with the words “FOOD RIPOSTE” written on their t-shirts could be seen passing under a security barrier to get closer...

This is one of those days when the Babylon Bee staff must shrug and wonder why they work so hard, when the real world of the left is working for you for free. A real story: The Mona Lisa was attacked by a cake-throwing eco-warrior in a bizarre stunt that thankfully failed to damage her famous smile. Videos posted on social media appear to show a young man in a wig and lipstick arriving at the Louvre in Paris in a wheelchair Sunday — then leaping up and attacking Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th-century masterpiece. The man, who was not immediately...

A European collector has bought a 17th century copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting for 2.9 million euros ($3.4 million), a record for a Mona Lisa reproduction, in an auction at Christie's in Paris on Friday. Known as the "Hekking Mona Lisa," after its owner who unsuccessfully argued that a copy he had bought in the 1950s was the real thing, is one of many reproductions of the original, which hangs in the Paris Louvre museum. "This is madness, this is an absolute record for a Mona Lisa reproduction," a Christie's spokeswoman said. She said there had been...

LEONARDO DA VINCI's masterpiece the Mona Lisa has captivated art lovers for centuries - but now, a scientist who analysed every inch and layer of the famous portrait has discovered hidden details beneath the painter's brushstrokes.The early 16th Century painting is arguably one of da Vinci’s most famous works and currently resides in the Louvre, in Paris. It’s estimated that 80 percent of their annual 10.2 million visitors attend to see the Mona Lisa. Scientist Pascal Cotte was asked to digitise the painting using a specialist camera, which was able to capture hidden layers beneath the portrait. From his multispectral...

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The Mona Lisa, also referred to as La Gioconda (or La Joconde), has endured centuries of fascination by artists, researchers, medical professionals, and even thieves. (snip) The Mona Lisa attracted medical attention in 2004 when a team of rheumatologists and endocrinologists suggested that skin lesions and hand swellings visible in the portrait may be indicative of a lipid disorder and heart disease.Specifically, they asserted that familial hyperlipidemia and premature atherosclerosis could have caused Lisa Gherardini’s death. They also proposed that Mona Lisa’s famous smile may have been the result of Bell’s palsy.After examining the painting, Dr. Mehra and Campbell found...

From Mona Lisa’s Secret Number to Duchamp’s Hidden Face: 5 Conspiracy Theories That Will Blow Up Your Art WorldDid Duchamp lie about finding his readymades? Did Anthony Quinn's painting predict 9/11? The truth is art there.\ In a lot of ways, this was the Year of the Conspiracy Theory. Fabulations and connect-the-dots conjectures of all sorts found their way from the margins to the center. The phenomenon very much affects art—which makes some sense, in that art is designed as fodder for fantasizing. Most of the time, such speculation is as consequential as the latest theory about Game of Thrones,...

Experts at the Louvre museum in Paris on Thursday revealed that Leonardo da Vinci may have also painted a topless version — called Joconde Nue, or Monna Vanna — of the famed masterpiece. A scientific study of the charcoal work found that it could be Da Vinci’s preparatory drawing for a naked version of La Gioconda. The Monna Vanna — which has been held since 1862 at the Condé museum in Chantilly — had previously been attributed to the Florentine master’s studio.

Born in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo died in 1519, age 67, and was buried in Amboise, southwest of Paris. His creative imagination foresaw and described innovations hundreds of years before their invention, such as the helicopter and armored tank. His artistic legacy includes the iconic Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. The idea behind the Project, founded in 2014, has inspired and united anthropologists, art historians, genealogists, microbiologists, and other experts from leading universities and institutes in France, Italy, Spain, Canada and the USA, including specialists from the J. Craig Venter Institute of California, which pioneered the sequencing of the human...

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is arguably the most famous portrait in the world, but now some are speculating that the woman with the inscrutable smile may not be a woman after all. They are suggesting that the Mona Lisa may be a self-portrait, da Vinci in drag. -more-

A GERMAN art historian claims to have solved one of the greatest mysteries of the Renaissance by discovering the identity of Mona Lisa. Magdalena Soest, 56, from Leverkusen in Germany, believes that Leonardo da Vinci based his famous portrait on a young, adventurous beauty called Caterina Sforza. Frau Soest believes that Leonardo based his painting, produced between 1500 and 1506, on a portrait of Sforza, the Duchess of Forlì and Imola, that was painted by the Italian master Lorenzo di Credi. “I wholeheartedly believe that she is one and the same person,” Frau Soest, a respected artist and consultant to...

A video uploaded to YouTube last week by engineer Egor Zakharov shows the iconic portrait translated into three different video clips, each featuring Mona Lisa moving her mouth and turning her head as if in conversation — demonstrating that we can now produce realistic avatars using a single image. Moscow-based Zakharov, an AI researcher with the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and the Samsung AI Center, and his colleagues published their findings, which have not been peer-reviewed, in the journal arXiv. Three-dimensional models of the human head are deeply complex, requiring “tens of millions of parameters,” the study authors...