Reason for the Smile: It’s a Self-Portrait : Computer Says ‘Mona Lisa’ Is ‘Da Vinci’

“Mona Lisa” has fascinated art historians and inspired love songs for centuries, but her ineffable gaze is not that of a mysterious woman, a researcher says. It’s that of artist Leonardo da Vinci.

A computer researcher at American Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s Bell Laboratories juxtaposed a red chalk self-portrait of da Vinci with “Mona Lisa” and found that the eyes, hairline, cheeks and nose were identical, according to the January issue of Art & Antiques magazine.

And the Mona Lisa smile is merely the mirror image of da Vinci’s as painted in his 1518 self-portrait, the magazine said.

The computer-aided discovery by researcher Lillian Schwartz apparently solves a riddle that confounded art lovers for nearly five centuries and raised speculation that Mona Lisa was a duchess, a concubine or something in between, Art & Antiques says.

The Sphinx-like face lacks eyebrows and identifiable jewelry, wears a plain dress, holds a strange pose and differs from any of the standard portrait subjects of its time, the magazine said.

After completing the portrait in 1504, da Vinci carried it from Florence to Milan, Rome and the court of Francois I at Amboise in France, where he died in 1519.

The ruse is in keeping with da Vinci’s life style and outlook, the magazine noted, adding that the painter was most likely a homosexual who, like many of his contemporaries, favored painting androgynous subjects.

The artist, also an inventor, engineer and scientist, was fascinated with optical tricks and paradoxes. For example, he wrote script in reverse that is legible only when viewed with a mirror.