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Unraveling the asymmetry of Mona Lisa smile.
Cortex. 2019 11; 120:607-610.C

Abstract

The Mona Lisa portrait, by Leonardo da Vinci, is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Over the years, there have been a number of debated topics on the painting, including the valence of the emotion expressed on her face. Nevertheless, the most recent interpretations agree that Mona Lisa expression is happiness. The smile asymmetry of Mona Lisa is another remarkable feature of the painting. We here asked forty-two healthy raters to judge which of the six basic emotions (or neutral expression) was expressed by the chimeric images of the left or right lower hemi face. We collected chosen responses, confidence levels and reaction times. Our results indicate that happiness is expressed only on the left side. According to some influent theories of emotion neuropsychology, we here interpreted the Mona Lisa asymmetric smile as a non-genuine smile, also thought to occur when the subject lies. Given that Leonardo was a great observer of human physiognomy we speculate on the intriguing possibility that Leonardo already knew the true meaning of asymmetric smile. Thus, Mona Lisa asymmetric smile could represent a stratagem Leonardo deliberately used to hold cryptic and enigmatic messages. Although the Mona Lisa smile continues to attract the attention of its observers, the true message it conveys remains elusive and many unsolved mysteries remain to be elucidated, perhaps via the knowledge of emotion neuropsychology.

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Publisher Full Text (DOI)

Authors+Show Affiliations

Marsili L
Gardner Family Center for Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, Department of Neurology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA. Electronic address: luc.marsili@gmail.com.
Ricciardi L
Neurosciences Research Centre, Molecular and Clinical Sciences Institute, St George's University of London, United Kingdom.
Bologna M
Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, IS, Italy.

MeSH

Facial ExpressionFemaleHappinessHumansMedicine in the ArtsPaintingsSmiling

Pub Type(s)

Journal Article

Language

eng

PubMed ID

31010582

Citation

Marsili, Luca, et al. "Unraveling the Asymmetry of Mona Lisa Smile." Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, vol. 120, 2019, pp. 607-610.
Marsili L, Ricciardi L, Bologna M. Unraveling the asymmetry of Mona Lisa smile. Cortex. 2019;120:607-610.
Marsili, L., Ricciardi, L., & Bologna, M. (2019). Unraveling the asymmetry of Mona Lisa smile. Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, 120, 607-610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2019.03.020
Marsili L, Ricciardi L, Bologna M. Unraveling the Asymmetry of Mona Lisa Smile. Cortex. 2019;120:607-610. PubMed PMID: 31010582.
* Article titles in AMA citation format should be in sentence-case
TY - JOUR T1 - Unraveling the asymmetry of Mona Lisa smile. AU - Marsili,Luca, AU - Ricciardi,Lucia, AU - Bologna,Matteo, Y1 - 2019/04/03/ PY - 2018/11/04/received PY - 2019/02/08/revised PY - 2019/03/27/accepted PY - 2019/4/24/pubmed PY - 2020/10/31/medline PY - 2019/4/24/entrez KW - Emotion KW - Facial asymmetry KW - Mona Lisa KW - Neuropsychology KW - Smile SP - 607 EP - 610 JF - Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior JO - Cortex VL - 120 N2 - The Mona Lisa portrait, by Leonardo da Vinci, is one of the most famous paintings in the world. Over the years, there have been a number of debated topics on the painting, including the valence of the emotion expressed on her face. Nevertheless, the most recent interpretations agree that Mona Lisa expression is happiness. The smile asymmetry of Mona Lisa is another remarkable feature of the painting. We here asked forty-two healthy raters to judge which of the six basic emotions (or neutral expression) was expressed by the chimeric images of the left or right lower hemi face. We collected chosen responses, confidence levels and reaction times. Our results indicate that happiness is expressed only on the left side. According to some influent theories of emotion neuropsychology, we here interpreted the Mona Lisa asymmetric smile as a non-genuine smile, also thought to occur when the subject lies. Given that Leonardo was a great observer of human physiognomy we speculate on the intriguing possibility that Leonardo already knew the true meaning of asymmetric smile. Thus, Mona Lisa asymmetric smile could represent a stratagem Leonardo deliberately used to hold cryptic and enigmatic messages. Although the Mona Lisa smile continues to attract the attention of its observers, the true message it conveys remains elusive and many unsolved mysteries remain to be elucidated, perhaps via the knowledge of emotion neuropsychology. SN - 1973-8102 UR - https://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/31010582/Unraveling_the_asymmetry_of_Mona_Lisa_smile_ DB - PRIME DP - Unbound Medicine ER -