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Ardo da Vinci

legendary artist his genius is universal

it speaks to everybody he was also a

scientist

and inventor there was a reason for

every decision in every line

how did he create the most famous

painting on Earth you can perceive the

beating of the pulse underneath her skin

the answers have been as elusive as her

smile Leonardo embraced mystery

now researchers are peeling away the

layers thanks to a new kind of

scientific investigation we are really

able to get inside the painting can

science unlock her secrets she seems

like she's alive because she looks

different depending on where you're

looking

and decipher the genius behind her

creator

decoding Da Vinci right now on Nova

[Music]

in the heart of Paris lies a former

royal castle

it is now the world's busiest Art Museum

the Louvre

filled with glorious galleries of

Antiquities mummies and michelangelos

but one Masterpiece is the biggest draw

of all

today's reigning Queen

the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci

the Mona Lisa has become some Grand

thing in our imagination

Mona Lisa you'd have a different feeling

about what she has in mind

every year Millions visit her drawn by

her beauty

or perhaps her Fame

they've clocked the average amount the

visitors spent looking at the Mona Lisa

and that's roughly about 15 seconds

you're more focused on getting a good

picture for your Instagram feed than

actually looking at the painting

so is the Mona Lisa just famous for

being famous

more icon than art

or does she deserve her place on the

louvre's throne as the most celebrated

painting in the world

it's not just a portrait of a woman who

is living 500 years ago it's a

demonstration of how painting could show

life

now researchers are using new techniques

to investigate the most famous painting

on Earth like never before

the smile is crucial

it's teasing you saying I know something

you don't know

could the Mona Lisa with her enigmatic

smile be the key to decoding the man who

made her

Leonardo da Vinci

no doubt he was a brilliant artist

but he was also a groundbreaking

scientist

he anticipated theories by both Galileo

and Newton by at least a century

and dreamed up remarkable inventions

that seemed to predict a modern age

armored tanks

flying machines

even something like a self-driving car

but were his scientific Explorations a

distraction from his painting

or with science the secret to his

artistic genius

was the Mona Lisa in fact Leonardo's

greatest invention

if you want to understand Leonardo da

Vinci you just have to look at the Mona

Lisa because it's all there

it's the combination of a lifetime spent

loving science and art

[Music]

in the back streets of Florence Italy

Walter Conte and his daughter Elena

prepare for their tribute to Leonardo

and the Mona Lisa

[Music]

human statues handing out Leonardo

quotes

their way of marking the 500th

anniversary of Leonardo's death

and just one of many celebrations that

are in the works around the world

from A Fine Art Museum in Beijing

to a multimedia Extravaganza in Peru

[Music]

and a blockbuster Exhibition at the

Louvre

for the Louvre museum is a really

important moment because the Louvre is

like Leonardo da Vinci we have the third

of all his paintings Vincent Delevan

oversees the five Leonardo masterpieces

that hang at the Louvre

that's the largest collection in the

world

while Leonardo may be the most famous

painter of all time he completed

surprisingly few paintings Leonardo was

with someone experimental he didn't want

to paint a lot he wanted to paint a

perfect painting

so what did it take for Leonardo to make

a perfect painting

the answer may be lying right under

deluvan's feet

for the upcoming exhibition he is

working with a team of scientists housed

downstairs from the Louvre at the center

for research and restoration of museums

in France

to a new kind of scientific

investigation we are really able to get

inside the painting and to understand

how Leonardo was working to perfect the

painting for a long long time during 5

10 20 years it's really something really

specific to Leonardo

they're appearing deep inside Leonardo's

masterpieces hoping to reveal the

secrets of his technique that our eyes

cannot see

I see something that is pleased to be

two-dimensional but which is really

three-dimensional because there is a

depth in a painting

for art historian Bruno Matan the first

step is to understand the chemistry of

Leonardo's paint

starting with the powdered minerals that

were the source of his colors

you have green which is made with the

scratching of copper plates you have

Vermilion which is made with Mercury you

have lead white which is made with lead

but these can't be applied directly on

the painting has to be mixed with

something else

these colored pigments are mixed with a

liquid like oil

that gets painted on in layers

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in a cross section of a painting you

have the base which today is frequently

canvas but in Leonardo's time they used

planks of wood

on that is a coat of white that can

reflect light

as the artist Works semi-translucent

paint is built up layer by layer

and then sealed with a coat of varnish

in the end our eyes see the interplay

between the light reflected off

different pigments suspended in the

layers

creating depth and Elusive subtleties

oil is a transverse of medium which

gives to them a mixture of deepness we

can see through all the layers you don't

only see a flat surface you have the

feeling of what is beneath the painting

Leonardo worked on the Mona Lisa for

about 16 years

can these investigative techniques help

reveal ultimately what he was doing all

that time

[Music]

the Mona Lisa began in Florence Italy in

1503 as a commission from a wealthy

cloth Merchant to paint his wife Lisa

gerardini

the word Mona was a polite form of

address much like Madam hence Mona Lisa

over time she became something much more

the Mona Lisa started off as a portrait

for a Merchant's wife and ended up as a

sort of Manifesto if you want of his

abilities as a painter

of his conception of the world even

so is this what the real Lisa looked

like

and how different does she appear today

from what Leonardo painted 500 years ago

to find out scientists captured the Mona

Lisa with an array of high-tech cameras

these detect light in the

electromagnetic spectrum that is not

visible to our eyes

[Music]

so just as some cameras can see wildlife

in the dark

these cameras can help us see the Mona

Lisa in a new light

literally

[Music]

each image provides clues about her past

so if you have a lot of different images

which can tell us about the structure of

the painting and the way it has been

made

in the ultraviolet image blotches of

dark blue appear

these revealed areas of paint which are

not by Leonardo's hand

their modern Restorations to repair

damage to the painting like this

dangerous crack in the wood base

it shows us that the painting is in fact

covered by a greenish vanish which

changes the colors of the through

painting this thick varnish has yellowed

and darkened over time

making it difficult to make out some of

the details

which is probably like a prompt lady we

should say because we do not know where

the arm stops

but this infrared image clearly shows

this dark area was once translucent

Lisa is wearing a veil that gracefully

Falls over her surprisingly slender

shoulders

to penetrate the very deepest layers the

team turned to a tool more familiar to

us from a doctor's office

x-rays

these can reveal how the painting began

most artists at the time began with a

drawing and then filled it in with thick

paint

so the X-ray looks like this

Raphael's la belge

the figures started out clearly defined

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stayed that way

but when Leonardo's paintings are

x-rayed the figures often vanish

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Leonardo image of like Phantom

we don't understand at First Sight what

really is on the picture

in the X-ray of the Mona Lisa there is

no clear outline

instead the image evolved as Leonardo

made continual adjustments

this also suggests Lisa may not have

looked exactly like this

he keeps it he doesn't deliver it to the

merchant who commissioned it because for

him it's no longer a portrait of Mona

Lisa it is a universal painting

in the upcoming exhibition Delia van

plans to hang some of these scientific

masterpieces along with Leonardo's

original paintings

the scans prove an essential point about

Leonardo's artistry

he painted like no one else

Leonardo is one of the first artists to

be really free

he felt free to change his mind not only

during the drawing preparation but also

during the painting of his work

this is incredibly not common he is the

only one to give such a liberty free

manner in his execution

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artists then were considered Craftsmen

and needed to churn Out Paintings for

patrons

so how did Leonardo become such a free

spirit

from the beginning Leonardo was an

outsider

born in 1452 to an unwed farm girl in

the small Italian town of Vinci he was

named Leonardo from Vinci therefore

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo had the great Good Fortune to

be born out of wedlock it meant he

didn't have crammed into him

the sort of old dusty Scholastic wisdom

of the Middle Ages instead he got to be

self-taught it also meant he doesn't

have to be a notary like his father and

so he has a fresh life where he can be

anything he wants

at about 14 Leonardo's father sent him

to learn a trade in Florence the

epicenter of Commerce learning and

Beauty at the beginning of the

Renaissance

Flores was one of their most advanced

social organizations of the planet very

wealthy city a city that was attracting

the brightest guys around

Florence he's just extraordinary at this

time

to produce Donatello mazzachio brunleski

Michelangelo Raphael

foreign with no formal education

Leonardo started as an apprentice in one

of the leading artist Studios of the day

the workshop of Andrea Del verrocchio

was a stouter above all but also a

painter an architect you could play

music

so the example of veracio was very

important to Leonardo

Leonardo's training with Baroque is a

real model of how an artist

should evolve

technique is subordinate to the active

scene it's about the eye and it's

Leonardo who first described that

It is believed

model for this verrocchio statue of

David is his Apprentice

the young Leonardo

so they think that Leonardo posed a

forest master

it's a very elegant boy face frame by

these beautiful curls despite the

circumstances of his illegitimate birth

the workshop gave Leonardo a way to get

ahead in life

he's a misfit he's illegitimate he's gay

he's left-handed he's a vegetarian he's

distracted and yet he's embraced by the

people of Florence because it was a very

tolerant City

[Music]

one of the most challenging construction

projects of the day was capping the Dome

of the breathtaking Cathedral with a

golden sphere

the commission of the crowning of the

cupola with a gilded sphere it was a

very important one and that the

commission de veracchio secured

varuccio's team which

with the young Leonardo had to figure

out not only the design but also how to

secure the one and a half ton ball on

top of the nearly 370 foot high

Cathedral

figuring out how to get the ball on top

of the cathedral helps Leonardo become a

great engineer it helps them become an

artist because he gets the perspective

of the ball right that combination of

science engineering and art becomes part

of who Leonardo da Vinci is

in fact in sheer quantity Leonardo's

scientific investigations far outweigh

his output of paintings

the proof of that lies in a remarkable

collection of replicas of his notebooks

we have very few records in the whole

history of science similar to Leonardo's

manuscripts these are not books you

cannot compare that to a work of by

Galileo or by Newton because they have

solved the problems before writing their

books

Paolo galusi is the director of the

Galileo Museum in Florence

what we have in Leonardo is the direct

expression of his internal dialogue

Leonardo's notebooks span his lifetime

they even come pocket-sized

we're sure that those 6 000 pages that

we have are by him and this is just

one-fourth of what he actually penned so

we're talking about something I was

obsessed by throughout his life

the Brilliance and breadth of Leonardo's

notebooks is astonishing

his ideas seem to predict our Modern Age

making Leonardo much more than a

Renaissance scientist for many

copter like

and a parachute

a fascination with water led to

ambitious civil engineering proposals

[Music]

and he conceived an intriguing

self-propelled machine that seems part

automobile part early robot

but could any of these inventive designs

have actually worked

[Music]

Leonardo is of course a great artist but

he's also a great scientist and I would

argue a great engineer the geometry is

stunning one small sketch in Leonardo's

notebooks has so intrigued MIT engineer

John oxendorf that he asked his graduate

student Carly best to bring 21st century

engineering rigor to see if Leonardo's

16th century idea would in fact stand

there is a historical reason for this

because you see it in the drawing right

yeah these two are in 1502 the year

before starting the Mona Lisa Leonardo

Leonard proposed to the Sultan of the

Ottoman Empire a bridge in

Constantinople five times longer than

any other span at the time

his plan for this ambitious project

sketched upside down in a small notebook

offers few details

yet just enough for best to bring it to

life

Leonardo provided four measurements but

he provided

two sketches at first it seems like a

rough sketch but as I dug into it I

realized there was a reason for every

decision in every line there was a lot

of thought put into the force

distribution and it wasn't just

aesthetic

it was engineering

and to test that engineering fast and

her colleagues have built a scale model

of the bridge

state-of-the-art 3D printer

four 3D printing came along we'd have to

try to build that bridge as close as we

could to the full scale because you

couldn't reliably get the geometry quite

right

Leonardo's Stone Bridge would have been

500 times the size of this model

but the physics are exactly the same we

have the bridge and we have the mold

that's holding it up the first piece

should be easy to take off

piece by piece she removes the styrofoam

a modern day stand-in for the wooden

scaffolding used in Leonardo's day

this is more like heart surgery than

Bridge construction finally the last

support is removed

and Leonardo's Stone Bridge stands

[Music]

the geometry is aesthetically beautiful

and

the fact that this is standing on its

own tells us that it was feasible

absolutely wow

whose Bridge even stays up when they

simulate an earthquake

oh my God it is moved by 30 feet

and the art still stands the bridge does

eventually collapse

but only after being moved the

equivalent of 50 feet

Leonardo has the artistic ability and he

also has that scientific knowledge and

that engineering capability where he can

create things that are beautiful and

structurally sound

bass clearly had to fill in some details

to get from this sketch

to this model

and we don't know if the bridge could

have been built with the wooden scaffold

of the day

and he also shows but she has shown

Leonardo got the basic physics right

what's extraordinary is the ideas that

he was coming up with

more than 500 years ago

we're still trying to understand them

[Music]

as with this ambitious proposal to the

sultan Leonardo sought out wealthy

patrons throughout his life to support

not only his art but his scientific

explorations

[Music]

30. he

came to Milan to work for its Duke

17 years later when the Duke was deposed

Leonardo had to move once again

back to Florence and later Rome

his accomplishments in science and art

meant he had much to offer Leonardo

sells himself as an engineer as well as

an artist because he knows he can make a

Better Living

I think Leonardo just loved the

connection of the Arts and Sciences and

he didn't want to have to be siled as

just the painter

Leonardo's Explorations in science can

also be clearly seen in the details of

his paintings

[Music]

botany

to the physics of flowing water

even the curls of human hair

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paint something absolutely perfect he

had to understand how nature was done

to paint a mountain to paint rocks he

had to understand why the Rock's wire of

that kind he was obsessed with that and

that was what he called the science of

painting

the science of painting was all

encompassing for Leonardo

but how could he capture the beauty he

observed in nature with paint

[Music]

back at the Louvre art restorers and

researchers are uncovering new clues in

an elegant intensive care unit for

priceless works of art

[Music]

thank you

to prepare for the upcoming exhibit

gelivera and the team of scientists are

restoring a painting long shrouded by

controversy

for centuries this portrait of Bacchus

was considered one of the few paintings

by Leonardo's hand

but now experts aren't so sure

for centuries that painting was

attributed to Leonardo

but during the 20th century some

historians said well it looks like a

difference compared to the other

paintings

Cynthia Pasquale has been brought in to

restore the painting

unique scientific techniques provide the

clues she needs to finally solve the

mystery

did Leonardo in fact paint this

is

restoration work is not for the faint of

heart

this painting may be in bad shape

but Pasquale is still taking her scalpel

to an Irreplaceable masterpiece

she scrapes away the yellow darkened

varnish

revealing a vibrant color beneath

okay

but other parts of the painting appear

more damaged

so Pasquale must rely on her training

not only in art history

but also chemistry

the colors of pigment in paint can

change or fade over time

but the chemistry of the pigments

themselves can still be detected

Pasquale orders a special scan for the

element copper often used in green paint

the scan reveals this dark area of the

painting was once a lush Garden

until the copper in the paint darkened

so we can see a lot of vegetables and

leaves and plants and flour

and when you look on the surface of the

work they are not

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while the beauty of these plants may

suggest Leonardo's meticulous attention

to detail

that's not enough to say for sure he

painted it himself

[Music]

so the investigation turns to his

brushwork

one of the most characteristic

Fingerprints of a Leonardo a remarkably

thin layers of paint

which can only be seen with a powerful

microscope

treatment

some leonardos have been found to have

as many as 30 layers of paint

many more than most painters

as she continues her restoration

Pasquale is looking for evidence of this

unusual technique

but what was Leonardo trying to achieve

with all those thin layers

just ask

ass painter

DaVinci was always looking for beauty

it's not just painting or drawing a tree

he wants to paint the perfect expression

of what a tree is

this aspiration to beauty is to me very

inspiring as an artist

Floren Farge is a painter in Dijon

France

in the tradition of the Renaissance

Farge runs an artist's Workshop

but with a Twist

hello everyone and welcome to a new

video his is a virtual one this one is

going to guide you through the entire

process of classical figure painting

Italian painters at the time mixed their

pigments into an egg base

using real egg

[Music]

but egg tempera doesn't allow as much

light to pass through it

so there is less depth in the painting

[Music]

instead Leonardo decided to use an oil

like linseed or walnut

Leonardo was using oil

because oil helps to reproduce in the

best way at the transition between light

and Shadow

gradually farge's portrait comes to life

for the finishing touches Farge

demonstrates how oil paint can be

applied very thinly to create the subtle

shading of light falling across the

human body if I want I can come back

later and put another layer on top of

that to make this transition very soft

[Music]

Leonardo's techniques are still being

taught today in his hometown of Florence

to make their paintings come alive

artists strive to capture human flesh

and the way light reveals its shape

Leonardo speaks about the Smoky

transition of light to shade

that's how we perceive in nature

problem often with photographic images

we see is that there's so much detail we

don't get the broader effect

we see life very much out of focus we

glance

other artists of the day like Sandra

Botticelli painted figures with hard

outlines

but Leonardo used his fine layers to

create soft transitions obscuring the

lines

this is

to look called spumato

from the Italian fumo or smoke

unquestionably the most famous example

of Leonardo's fumato is that enigmatic

smile of the Mona Lisa

just look at the mouth

[Music]

look at the eyes

you can't see lines

see the movement of the light

[Music]

credible and there is no comparison with

other artists at that time

[Music]

there's no Edge there at all it's all

very uncertain

this plays a psychological role of

course because he is present but somehow

not tangible

is idealized

[Music]

for Leonardo's fomato captured in two

Dimensions what he observed in the

three-dimensional world

[Music]

but in order to get the skin just right

he had to go deeper to the muscles and

tendons below

Trudy Van Houten has taught Anatomy for

30 years perfect

Leonardo da Vinci constantly inspires me

she says the sign

Anatomy is

yes please though the process often is

not nice you beautifully preserved

tiny little vessel

Leonardo dissected 30 bodies

and with no Refrigeration it would have

been especially unpleasant

the intestines would have been a

particular problem because they contain

a lot of bacteria and even after death

the intestines become inflated and

larger and larger that's where things

were going to go bad quickest and smell

the worst

it's a very messy business

[Music]

many of the drawings from Leonardo's

messy dissections today live on in the

most refined of places

Windsor Castle just outside of London

steps away from where Prince Harry and

Meghan Markle pose for their wedding

photos

more than 200 Leonardo drawings are

secured in the print room

Martin Clayton is the curator of those

drawings

[Music]

help himself making a beautiful drawing

but what most interested Leonardo was

the structure the Machinery of the body

Killer drawing is one of the finest

examples of Leonardo trying to

understand how the shoulder Works purely

in mechanical terms

there's no mystery of the body the body

is a machine that can be looked at and

analyzed in purely objective terms

beauty of Leonardo's drawings is

undeniable

but in light of all that we've learned

with the help of tools like the MRI

did he get it right

if I were asked to grade his anatomical

drawings

they would go from a to f

his drawing of the muscles of things

that he was directly observing and

giving functional sense to those I would

give an A-Plus

in terms of some of the organs I could

not do so

one of Leonardo's most ambitious

anatomical drawings is called the great

lady

it is considered a masterpiece but for

Van Houten it's a bit of a mess

I went to right away our strange

structures flying out on the sides of

the uterus

they reminded me of carrots with tops

these strange sort of horn-like

structures are ligaments observed by

Leonardo in a cow Leonardo assumed that

all mammals have the same structures

sort of feeling his way into a field

that had never been Illustrated before

Leonardo's groundbreaking dissections

certainly informed his art

he returned to this painting Saint

Jerome after 20 years

revising the neck to accurately portray

the muscle beneath

he did not revisit one of his earliest

paintings Geneva da Vinci and it shows

in what has been called the flatness of

her face

[Music]

but by the time of the Mona Lisa

Leonardo's knowledge of anatomy is

beautifully convincing

one intriguing page of Leonardo's

notebooks shows several illustrations of

human lips in exaggerated Expressions

done from dissections

and it shows how each muscle and each

nerve affects the lip

and at the very top is this tiny faint

sketch and you see the first sketch of

what will be the smile of the Mona Lisa

[Music]

anatomy and his painting technique

explain in part how Leonardo infused the

Mona Lisa with a life-like quality

but to complete the illusion he needed

to explore another area of science

how humans see

[Music]

among the many aspects in which Leonardo

was using his knowledge as a scientist

to become a better painter is Optics and

Optics is called by Leonardo perspectiva

perspective

it's basic geometry because when you

have an object with parallel lines they

will seem to vanish into a point which

is called the vanishing point

was fascinated by many aspects of how we

perceive our world

even studied the composition of air to

determine how atmosphere affects the

appearance of objects in the distance

Leonardo is trying to capture the

complexity of the world

but how can you paint something that you

cannot see like the transparency of air

Leonardo not only looked at mathematical

perspective but he looked at how colors

change as you get further away how the

sharpness of something changes as you

get further away from it

and did Leonardo also discover tricks of

perception to pull off the greatest

illusion of all

that elusive smile

she's looking out and her smile is a

reaction triggered by the arrival of

somebody this is the fiction that the

painting tries to establish

the great artists know how to draw you

in

but not to tell you what to think they

offer the tease

the ambiguity of Mona Lisa's smile is

indeed part of her Allure

[Music]

how did Leonardo pull that effect off

that is a question that intrigued

neurophysiologist Margaret Livingstone

she studies the human visual system how

our eyes and brain operate together to

make sense of the world as a

neurophysiologist I actually learn a lot

from artists because they study how we

see I study how we see

a lot of good art takes advantage of the

computations your brain makes by

exaggerating things that your visual

system finds important

human vision is among the best in the

animal kingdom

the center of our retina is packed with

special photoreceptors that enable us to

see details or sharpness

but away from the center toward the

periphery there are fewer of those types

of receptors

but not detail

okay now I want you to close your eyes

I'm going to put up two versions of the

Mona Lisa one accurate and one distorted

to illustrate livingstones enlists your

colleague Peter to see if he can spot a

fake Mona Lisa using Justice peripheral

vision okay briefly open your eyes and

look at the yellow spot and close them

right away

and point to which is the accurate

reproduction

open your eyes and see whether you chose

the correct one

[Music]

point at the real version

[Music]

can I keep that

Peter got only one of four Mona Lisas

right

and Livingstone says that's not unusual

most people don't know how bad

peripheral vision is because as soon as

something happens in their peripheral

vision they look at it and then they

bring the high resolution part of their

visual system onto it

in fact our eyes are constantly moving

three times a second filling in the

details

the effect got Livingstone thinking

could this explain why the Mona Lisa

sometimes seems to be smiling and

sometimes not

using a photo app she blurs the image

like in our peripheral vision

so I filtered the image in such a way

that it would look like what you would

see to your peripheral vision knowing

what I know about processing the result

she's grinning from ear to ear

as you look at the Mona Lisa your eye

moves around the painting

when you look away from her mouth it

enters your peripheral vision

and Mona Lisa appears to smile

but look directly at the mouth and the

smile vanishes

[Music]

she seems like she's alive because she

looks different depending on where

you're looking

Leonardo's paintings come alive because

he understands human emotion

and because he has a good feel for the

underlying science

that combination comes together year

after year as he's doing the Mona Lisa

to make it such an interactive painting

back at the Louvre synzia Pasquale has

removed the old yellowed varnish from

Bacchus

uncovering the brilliant original colors

it reveals an atmospheric perspective

that suggests Leonardo's touch

thinking of these layers of darkened and

yellow varnish we were able to

ReDiscover the original forms the the

quality of the blue It's a Wonderful

blue and you see how the painter

represents these cities with that effect

of humidity of what Leonardo called the

the atmospheric perspective

but Pasquale's investigation has also

uncovered details like the harsh shading

in the face that don't show the

characteristics fumato fingerprint of

Leonardo

I can't see the Leonardo touch

this is a little bit mechanical this

line for the shadow of this so hard you

know Leonardo don't do this

[Music]

Pasquale and the team at the Louvre have

solved a centuries-old mystery

the Bacchus cannot be attributed to

Leonardo

[Music]

but that doesn't mean he wasn't involved

very often his apprentices are actually

painting the picture so you would

conceive the general design of the work

and then the manual execution would be

delegated to members of his Workshop

[Music]

the restoration has succeeded in

bringing much of the original Beauty

back to this painting

[Music]

but it also raises an intriguing

question

should the same thing be done to the

Mona Lisa

you have to imagine that under that

vanish you could see a wonderful a blue

sky probably also the face of the hand

are more pink like natural skin

if we could just take that varnish off

we could see it the way Leonardo really

did it

but I think French governments have

fallen for Less cause than trying to

take the Mona Lisa out of circulation

and clean it

perhaps there is another way

could she be given a Digital Makeover

that is what Pascal caught is trying to

do

he has analyzed the Mona Lisa with a

remarkably powerful camera and lights

which he demonstrates using a replica

we make the measurement in the basement

of zulu inside the laboratory

it's a very emotional to have the

painting enhance without the frame you

can look at this painting under this

very intense light that reveal

everything that you cannot see usually

cots extremely detailed scan of the Mona

Lisa and his analysis of the Optics and

chemistry of paint reveal how the colors

may have changed over time

it's not just the varnish that yellows

and darkens

but the pigments and oil in the paint

itself

cots challenge is to reverse engineer

the effects of that aging

this is not just photoshopping it and

messing around with the colors which you

and I could do and get tolerable results

but this is based on pigment analysis

first Kant determines how much the

varnish has darkened

and with his computer peels it away

next he identifies with the color of

each pigment would have looked like 500

years ago and recreates them to see the

colors just as Leonardo did

for example we know that Leonardo make

the sky with white lead and LA pistachi

so we have a software that removes the

wrong colors to obtain the genuine curve

then pixel by pixel cart restores those

colors

suddenly a greenish Sky becomes

brilliantly blue

and a bit of flush comes back to Lisa's

cheeks

finally as the French say

voila

suddenly she doesn't look like the

submarine goddess

she looks as if she's in the fresh air

which is just terrific

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restoration has brought Lisa back to

life at least digitally closer to the

state that leonardos are

allowing us all to see the paintings

legendary Beauty

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science it took

the geometry and Optics of perspective

the anatomy behind her face

and the somatous soft lines

capturing the mystery and movement of

life

but even with all the modern insights

the Mona Lisa is vastly more than the

sum of her scientific parts

pinning down exactly why we are so drawn

to her ultimately remains as elusive as

her smile

three years before his death Leonardo

was invited to France to live and work

for the king

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cross the Alps by horse or mule

carrying three paintings

those paintings including the Mona Lisa

Lisa now hang at the Louvre

where the doors are about to open on the

500-year Blockbuster Leonardo exhibition

abrasion of a genius who fuse together

the worlds of Art and Science

Leonardo is an Italian Renaissance

painted but his genius is universal and

it speaks to everybody

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forget that you're looking at pigments

on a piece of wood

the idea is that you're looking at a

real living breathing being

foreign

the key to Leonardo da Vinci is that he

doesn't make a distinction between the

beauty of nature that he studies in His

science and the beauty of his art

he could have spent more time just being

a painter but had he done that he

wouldn't have been Leonardo da Vinci and

he wouldn't have painted the Mona Lisa

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thank you

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thank you

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[Applause]

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