An Italian scientist has claimed that the Mona Lisa’s famously enigmatic smile was due to nothing more tragic or mysterious than cholesterol.
Vito Franco, of the University of Palermo, says that the facial expression of the model in the world-famous 16th century painting indicates that there was a build up of fatty acids around her eyes. He believes he has identified a subcutaneous accumulation of cholesterol in the hollow of her left eye, also known as xanthelasma. The build up of fatty acids is a sign that the model had high cholesterol.
The model was believed to be Lisa Del Giocondo, the wife of a cloth and silk merchant and the member of a Florentine family. Various suggestions have been made as to what prompted her famously pensive and tragic smile, ranging from the death of her child to the theory she was a highly-paid whore.
Professor Franco has studied a variety of great works of art and claims that he has discovered evidence that the models used suffered from a variety of ailments. He thinks that the unnaturally long fingers and slender hands in the model for Botticelli’s Portrait of a Youth, hanging in Washington’s National Gallery of Art, indicate a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome, which it has been suggested that Osama Bin Laden also suffers from.
He also believes that Raphael’s depiction of a miserable-looking Michaelangelo in the foreground of his School of Athen’s showed that he was suffering from excess uric acid, ‘typical of those afflicted by renal calculosis’, due to the swollen knees in the painting.
The professor revealed his findings at a European conference on human pathology in Florence.