Lisa del Giocondo – subject of the Mona Lisa

Lisa del Giocondo, also known as Lisa Gherardini, Lisa di Antonio Maria (Antonmaria) Gherardini, Lisa and Mona Lisa, was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy. Lisa del Giocondo’s name was given as Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance.

Little is known about Lisa’s life. Born in Florence and married as a teenager to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was mother to six children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life.

Mona Lisa has now become probably the world’s most famous painting and took on a life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and hobbyists made the work of art a globally recognized icon and an object of commercialization. In 2005 Lisa was definitively identified as the model of the Mona Lisa.

What the Mona Lisa Can Teach You About Taking Great Portraits

Mona Lisa article – What the Mona Lisa Can Teach You About Taking Great Portraits – Taken from Digital Photography School.

When it comes to famous images the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most recognized in the world.

When I visited the Louvre in Paris a couple of years ago I was stunned by the crowds of people gathering around this small image, pushing and shoving to get close and to take a picture of it (I got some great shots of the crowd).

The Mona Lisa has been at the center of much debate and speculation over the years but why is it an image that intrigues people so much and what can we learn from it as photographers today?

While we live in a different time (the Mona Lisa was painted in the 1500’s) and use different technology – is there something in this famous image that we can be inspired by as image makers today?

Lessons from the Mona Lisa for Photographers

Today I want to explore some of the different aspect of the Mona Lisa and point out some things that Leonardo did in painting this image that I think we could take away as portrait photographers today.

Composition

While we look at the Mona Lisa today and see it’s composition as fairly standard and simple – for it’s time the composition of the Mona Lisa was ground breaking and has set new trends in painting which have been followed for centuries since.

One of the compositional elements that the portrait is known for is Leonardo’s use of a pyramidal composition which shows the subject with a wider base at her arms and her hands forming the front corner and everything is in place to draw the eye up her body to her eyes and her infamous smile.

Take Home Lessons for Today

The same form of composition can work for us. While I wouldn’t dare suggest that this is the only or best way to set up a portrait shot – the pyramidal composition is one worth trying.

The Pose

Again – today we look at Mona Lisa’s pose and it seems fairly normal but for it’s day it was quite revolutionary as most portraits at the time were rigid, stiff and quite often profiles rather than front on.

In contrast Mona Lisa is somewhat relaxed and at ease as she leans upon the arm of a chair with her hands crossed in a relaxed fashion.

While she’s slightly turned to one side she sits open to the viewer and holding their eye.

Also unusual for the time was the fact that Leonardo went against the norm with the framing of this image and opted for a three quarter length pose rather than a full length one. In this way he filled the frame with his subject which lends itself to an intimate image and little room for distraction by her context.

One last aspect of the pose is that the Leonardo has positioned Mona Lisa’s eyes at the eye level of the one viewing the image. This brings a sense of intimacy to the image as we the viewer gaze directly into her eyes (there’s not a sense that we’re looking down on her or that she’s doing that to us).

Take Home Lessons for Today

This classic pose works today. Fill your frame with your subject by using a three quarter length pose, relax your subject, have them turn their body slightly away from the camera and look directly at the camera. Give their hands something to lean on (they can look awkward otherwise). Most of all – attempt to relax your subject.

The Background

Much has been written about the background of the Mona Lisa and we can draw out a few things from it for today.

One thing worth noting is that while paintings of the day generally had both the subject and background in sharp focus with lots of detail – the background of the Mona Lisa seems to ‘fade’ or become more blurred and out of focus the further from the subject it extends.

This was unusual for the time and is an effect that many portrait photographers use today by choosing a large Aperture to make for a blurred background that leaves the viewer of the image to focus upon the subject.

While there is definitely points of interest in the background (there’s a lot of debate about whether the two sides of it ‘match’ and whether it’s supposed to be some kind of a fantasy/imaginary background) the colors in it are somewhat bland, muted and subtle – again leaving the focus upon Mona Lisa.

Take Home Lessons for Today

There are different ways to use a background of a portrait. It can either be used to put your subject into context by showing their surrounds – or it can be used as a backdrop that is largely a blank canvas with few features so that your subject stands out.

In a sense Leonardo has done both with his background. It doesn’t take the focus away from the subject – yet the landscape behind her does have an element of mystery and interest to it. It’s also visually complementary to the subject with some of the shapes and colors almost mirroring colors and shapes in the subject’s clothing.

The lesson is to carefully consider your backgrounds – they can greatly enhance or detract from your portraits.

Light

One of the things that I like about the Mona Lisa is the way in which light falls upon the subject. Leonardo uses light to draw the eye of the viewer to the parts of the image that he wishes to be highlighted (the face and hands) and balances the image nicely by placing hands and face in positions that counter one another.

Leonardo also uses shadow (or a lack of light) to add depth and dimension to different aspects of the image – particularly the area around Mona Lisa’s neck and in the ripples on the dress on her arm.

Take Home Lessons for Today

Think about how your subject is lit. Use it to draw the eye to key parts of your image but also use shadow to create depth and dimension to your shots.

Clothing

We’ve talked about clothes and portraits here at DPS before and Leonardo takes the approach of darker less obtrusive clothes in this image. Once again – this is a little different to other portraits of the time which are renowned for being bright.

While her dress has quite a bit of detail (the lace work is quite fine and the detail in the folds on her arms are lovely) and it all is within keeping of the feel of the image – everything works to highlighting her face.

There’s also a lack of any kind of jewelry or any other kind of accessory to distract the viewer away from Mona Lisa’s face.

Leonardo obviously wants something about the woman herself to shine through in this image rather than anything else.

Take Home Lessons for Today

Clothes are another element that can be a real distraction in a portrait. Take a lesson from Leonardo and use clothes that fit with the subject and give them context – but which don’t distract your viewer.

Framing

One of the things that I’d not noticed about the Mona Lisa before that i read about today is that on either side of the subject just under and to the side of each of her shoulders there is half of a round ball shape (see the images below on the left).

It is believed that what we see of currently of the image is actually slightly smaller than the original. Part of the image was lost when the image was re-framed at some point. What were the balls?

The most widely accepted theory is that in the original and full version of the painting two columns extend up from the balls on either side of Mona Lisa. She’s actually sitting on a balcony overlooking the view behind her. You can see the horizontal edge of the balcony extending between the two columns.

Here’s how one artist reproduced the Mona Lisa with the extra columns.

Whether or not the columns in the original looked exactly like this reproduction or not I’m not sure – but it seems that Leonardo used a technique that we call ‘framing‘ in photography today. This technique is all about drawing the eye of the viewer of an image to your main subject. It also has the potential to add a little context to a portrait (with the columns it would be more obvious that Mona Lisa is sitting on a balcony).

Take Home Lessons for Today

Learn to use techniques like framing to draw the eye of the viewer of your images to your main subject. Frames can be subtle and a natural part of the environment around your subject. Don’t use them in every shot but do keep your eye out for opportunities to include them to add another dimension to your portrait work.

Mystery

Who is the woman (its been argued that she is anyone from a female form of Leonardo himself through to the wife of the man who commissioned the image)? What is the background? Why is she smiling (or is she)?

There’s something mysterious both about the subject herself (her look is both alluring and aloof) and the way that the image was painted (Leonardo used a technique called ‘blurring’ around the edges of the subject that was new for his time that give it a mysterious quality). This leaves the viewer of the image asking questions and entering into it with imagination. Leaving elements of the image open to interpretation can make an image impact it’s viewer.

Take Home Lessons for Today

One of the elements that takes a proficient image and makes it a great image is that it goes beyond being a record keeping exercise and becomes a story telling one.

The Mona Lisa has drawn viewers to use their imagination and have conversation about it for centuries simply because it leaves parts of the story untold. This is something that can’t really be learned as a photographer – but is something that comes with experience.

What Lessons Does the Mona Lisa Teach You about Photography?

What have I missed out on? What do you see in this famous painting that could teach us about photography?

For The Love Of Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa article – For The Love Of Mona Lisa – Taken from Detroit Free Press – Monday, August 1,2005 by Erin Chan, Free Press Staff Writer.

Diane Shipley DeCillis meant the Mona Lisa to symbolize a kind of proletarian calling card for her gallery, a way to say: “Art lovers of the world, unite!”
That was two decades ago.

Now, DeCillis has used the famed painting of the brunette woman with the enigmatic smile to give her Southfield store, The Print Gallery, an identity- and international recognition.

Today, DeCillis will unveil the exhibit “Mona Lisa Mania” at the gallery. The exhibit includes a 44 inch by 62 inch Mona Lisa done as a paint-by-numbers portrait. This month, “Mona Poetica” (Mayapple $16.50), an anthology of poetry about the Mona Lisa co-edited by DeCillis, will make its debut.

And on August 28th, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), will air an hour- long special on the Mona Lisa with five minutes of so-called punchy footage featuring DeCillis, her gallery and her affinity for the masterpiece, according to Peter Newman, a BBC director.
(Newman, who is managing the television shoot, says it is unlikely the broadcast will be available to American viewers.)

De Cillis first showed her love of the Mona Lisa in the 1980’s with a few images on business cards and a scattering of prints at her gallery, which she opened on Northwestern Highway in 1979.

Her relationship blossomed into commissions for aprons and T- shirts with playful images, like the Mona Lisa eating spaghetti and meatballs and shouting “Mangia!”- “Eat!” in Italian.
Then DeCillis began to study the portrait by Leonardo da Vinci and became so intimate with it that she began referring to the painting as a person.
“No matter who you are or where you go, everybody knows who the Mona Lisa is,” says DeCillis, 54, of West Bloomfield. “She has become a symbol of the masses to me”. In 1998, DeCillis created a web site- www.monalisamania.com- to give fans a forum to share theories about the painting.

Four years ago, the site nabbed a mention by Donald Sassoon in his book, “Becoming Mona Lisa” (Harcourt 2001; $16.00), which has become a sensation among Mona Lisa lovers akin to Dan Brown’s best- seller “The Da Vinci Code,” which also mentions the painting.

Kelly McGuire, an employee at The Print Gallery who helps run the Web site, says it averages 1.3 million hits per month. Born with tousled brown locks that echo those of the Mona Lisa, DeCillis has become so immersed in the portrait the no longer considers the Mona Lisa snow globe or Mona Lisa mask or Mona Lisa trophy in her office novelties.
“At this point, she’s like a family member,” DeCillis says.

he Mona Lisa has managed to stay a hit for an estimated 502 years. Pop artist Andy Warhol made several screen prints of the Mona Lisa. Celebrated contemporary artist Jean- Michel Basquait portrayed a marred Mona Lisa as the center of a dollar bill.

In 1999, at the height or former President Bill Clinton’s sex scandal, the New Yorker magazine ran an illustrated cover of the Mona Lisa- and replaced her face with that of Monica Lewinsky.

“Once something goes into popular culture, then it transcends just art history and it becomes a part of everybody’s visual landscape,” says Gilda Snowden, 50, who teaches art history at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit. “That’s what the Mona Lisa has done.”

There are three reasons Newman has found, that the Mona Lisa has reached the status of superstar:

· The painting’s world tours, particularly one to the United States in 1963.
· The frequency the image is used for advertising.
· How the image has been brought into consumer culture, not just with print reproductions, but with images of Mona Lisa on such things as socks, chocolate bars, coasters, kaleidoscopes, cameras, coffee packets and more.

Like the Beatles, the Mona Lisa drew hordes of people when the painting came to America, first at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and then at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Susan Madigan, an art historian at Michigan State University, remembers smelling sweat and feeling cramped amidst crowds before being pushed in front of the portrait at the Met 42 years ago.

She stood before the painting for about two minutes, thinking it was small at 30 inches by 21 inches, but she was absolutely awed.

“It was almost like being in church,” says Madigan, 54 of Brighton, Peering at the Mona Lisa reproductions at The Print Gallery before sitting down for an interview with the BBC. “I know it sounds like a stupid thing to say, but this was by Leonardo da Vinci! This was the Mona Lisa!”
DeCillis has seen the painting only once, at age 15, when she went to the Musee du Louvre in Paris with her family.

The Louvre has housed the painting since 1797. In April, the museum gave the painting a new room. Like Madigan, DeCillis first focused on the painting’s size.

Then she recalls standing back, watching people examine the painting with wonder and becoming enthralled. Before leaving the Louvre, DeCillis nabbed a book about the museum from the bookstore- it carried (what else?) the image of the Mona Lisa.

Seated in her office last week, DeCillis recalled the moment with delight, that was the first image of the Mona Lisa she had ever purchased. There would be more.

“She would collect prints and stack them under her bed,” says DeCillis’s mother, Freda Shipley Reid, 72, of Waterford. “And she would say, ‘Someday, I’ll have my own gallery.”

The Print Gallery, which sells jewelry and gifts in addition to specializing in framing, does just under $1 million a year in business.

And because of DeCillis, its reputation cannot be separated from the Mona Lisa, an image that has made its way to the rooftop of the gallery, luring customers with serenity, simplicity, and ahhhhh, smile.

Mona Lisa licked into shape

Mona Lisa News Item – Mona Lisa licked into shape – Taken from Channel 4 News.

Leonardo da Vinci fans were in for a shock outside a theatre as an artwork depicting the Mona Lisa as an ice-cream cow went on display.

While the original masterpiece remains virtually untarnished in more than 500 years, the latest impression on display near the National Theatre in London was at risk of melting within five minutes of direct sunlight.

The “Moo-na Lisa”, by food artist Prudence Emma Staite, was created using biscuits, chocolate and ice-cream as part of a promotion by Ben and Jerry’s.

25 Secrets of Mona Lisa Revealed

Mona Lisa article – 25 Secrets of Mona Lisa Revealed – taken from livescience.com.

New images uncover 25 secrets about the Mona Lisa, including proof that Leonardo da Vinci gave her eyebrows, solving a long-held mystery.

The images are part of an exhibition, “Mona Lisa Secrets Revealed,” which features new research by French engineer Pascal Cotte and debuts in the United States at the Metreon Center in San Francisco, where it will remain through the end of this year. The Mona Lisa showcase is part of a larger exhibition called “Da Vinci: An Exhibition of Genius.”

Cotte, founder of Lumiere Technology, scanned the painting with a 240-megapixel Multi-spectral Imaging Camera he invented, which uses 13 wavelengths from ultraviolet light to infrared. The resulting images peel away centuries of varnish and other alterations, shedding light on how the artist brought the painted figure to life and how she appeared to da Vinci and his contemporaries.

“The face of Mona Lisa appears slightly wider and the smile is different and the eyes are different,” Cotte said. “The smile is more accentuated I would say.”

Mona Lisa mysteries

A zoomed-in image of Mona Lisa’s left eye revealed a single brush stroke in the eyebrow region, Cotte said.

“I am an engineer and scientist, so for me all has to be logical. It was not logical that Mona Lisa does not have any eyebrows or eyelashes,” Cotte told LiveScience. “I discovered one hair of the eyebrow.”

Another conundrum had been the position of the subject’s right arm, which lies across her stomach. This was the first time, Cotte said, that a painter had rendered a subject’s arm and wrist in such a position. While other artists had never understood da Vinci’s reasoning, they copied it nonetheless.

Cotte discovered the pigment just behind the right wrist matched up perfectly with that of the painted cover that drapes across Mona Lisa’s knee. So it did make sense: The forearm and wrist held up one side of a blanket.

“The wrist of the right hand is up high on the stomach. But if you look deeply in the infrared you understand that she holds a cover with her wrist,” Cotte said.

Behind a painting

The infrared images also revealed da Vinci’s preparatory drawings that lie behind layers of varnish and paint, showing that the Renaissance man was also human.

“If you look at the left hand you see the first position of the finger, and he changed his mind for another position,” Cotte said. “Even Leonardo da Vinci had hesitation.”

Other revelations include:

• Lace on Mona Lisa’s dress
• The transparency of the veil shows da Vinci first painted a landscape and then used transparency techniques to paint the veil atop it.
• A change in the position of the left index and middle finger.
• The elbow was repaired from damage due to a rock thrown at the painting in 1956.
• The blanket covering Mona Lisa’s knees also covers her stomach.
• The left finger was not completely finished.
• A blotch mark on the corner of the eye and chin are varnish accidents, countering claims that Mona Lisa was sick.
• And the Mona Lisa was painted on uncut poplar board, contrary to speculations.

In the larger picture, Cotte said when he stands back and looks up at the enlarged infrared image of Mona Lisa, her beauty and mystique are apparent.

“If you are in front of this huge enlargement of Mona Lisa, you understand instantly why Mona Lisa is so famous,” Cotte said. He added, it’s something you have to see with your own eyes.

The Mystery of Mona Lisa’s Smile Linked to Flickering Eyes

Mona Lisa article – The Mystery of Mona Lisa’s Smile Linked to Flickering Eyes – taken from SFgate.com.

For nearly 500 years, people have been gazing at Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of the Mona Lisa with a sense of bafflement.

First she is smiling. Then the smile fades. A moment later the smile returns only to disappear again. What is with this lady’s face? How did the great painter capture such a mysterious expression and why haven’t other artists copied it?

The Italians have a word to explain Mona Lisa’s smile: sfumato. It means blurry, ambiguous and up to the imagination.

But now, according to Dr. Margaret Livingstone, a Harvard neuroscientist, there is another, more concrete explanation. Mona Lisa’s smile comes and goes, she says, because of how the human visual system is designed, not because the expression is ambiguous.

Livingstone is an authority on visual processing, with a special interest in how the eye and brain deal with different levels of contrast and illumination. Recently, while writing on a book about art and the brain, an editor advised her to learn more about art history. “I got a copy of E.H. Gombich’s ‘The Story of Art’ in which he basically said, ‘I know you’ve seen this painting a hundred times but look at it, just look at it.’ And so that’s what I did.”

In staring at the picture, Livingstone said she noticed a kind of flickering quality. “But it wasn’t until later when I was riding my bike home that I realized what it was,” she said. “The smile came and went as a function of where my eyes were.” A scientific explanation for the elusive smile was suddenly clear. The human eye has two distinct regions for seeing the world, Livingstone said. A central area, called the fovea, is where people see colors, read fine print, pick out details. The peripheral area, surrounding the fovea, is where people see black and white, motion and shadows.

When people look at a face, their eyes spend most of the time focused on the other person’s eyes, Livingstone said. Thus when a person’s center of gaze is on Mona Lisa’s eyes, his less accurate peripheral vision is on her mouth. And because peripheral vision is not interested in detail, it readily picks up shadows from Mona Lisa’s cheekbones.

These shadows suggest and enhance the curvature of a smile. But when the viewer’s eyes go directly to Mona Lisa’s mouth, his central vision does not see the shadows, she said. “You’ll never be able to catch her smile by looking at her mouth,” Livingstone said. The flickering quality – with smile present and smile gone – occurs as people move their eyes around Mona Lisa’s face.

The actress Geena Davis also shows the Mona Lisa effect, Livingstone said, always seeming to be smiling, even when she isn’t, because her cheek bones are so prominent.

“I do not mean to take away the mystery of Leonardo,” Livingstone said. “He was a genius who captured something from real life that rarely gets noticed in real life. It took the rest of us 500 years to figure it out.”

It is also not clear, she said, why other painters have not copied the effect more often. To make a good counterfeit Mona Lisa, one would have to paint the mouth by looking away from it, she said. How anyone can do that remains a mystery.

Louvre sets stage for “Funeral of Mona Lisa”

Mona Lisa article – Louvre sets stage for “Funeral of Mona Lisa” – Taken from Reuters.

PARIS (Reuters) – A giant, grey version of Mona Lisa with tears in her eyes and streaks of paint running down her front goes on display at the Louvre museum this week in the room next to the original by Leonardo da Vinci.

The new work by Franco-Chinese artist Yan Pei-Ming is the centrepiece of an exhibition entitled “The Funeral of Mona Lisa,” part of the Louvre’s efforts to bring contemporary art face to face with the masterpieces of old.

The display consists of five paintings. The huge grey Mona Lisa is in the center, framed by two mysterious images that look like grey clouds and are dotted with images of skulls modeled on scans of the painter’s head.

At the far ends of the display are a portrait of Yan’s dead father and a self-portrait of Yan himself in a deathlike pose.

He said the works were “a homage and a funeral” for Mona Lisa, without further explanation.

Yan is famous in contemporary art circles for portraits of 20th century icons ranging from Mao Zedong to Bruce Lee.

The Louvre is the world’s most visited museum. It hosted 8.5 million visitors in 2008, many of them tourists for whom the Mona Lisa is the star attraction.

Many artists have used Da Vinci’s masterpiece as the basis for their own works, sometimes parodying the original. Dadaist painter Marcel Duchamp gave her a mustache and a goatee, while Andy Warhol created pop art serigraph prints of her.

It is a first, however, for a work inspired by the Mona Lisa to go on display so close to the original. “The Funeral of Mona Lisa” opens to the public on Thursday, until May 18.

New Look at Mona Lisa Yields Some New Secrets

Mona Lisa article – New Look at ‘Mona Lisa’ Yields Some New Secrets – Taken from NY Times.

OTTAWA, Sept. 26 — The first major scientific analysis of the “Mona Lisa” in 50 years has uncovered some unexpected secrets, including signs that Leonardo da Vinci changed his mind about his composition, French and Canadian researchers said Tuesday.

Photographs taken with invisible infrared light and a special infrared camera suggest that at least one of the details was hiding in plain sight, the scientists and conservators said.

The sitter in the Louvre Museum’s 16th-century masterpiece, believed to be Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant, was originally painted wearing a large transparent overdress made from gauze, they said. Under normal light, part of the garment is visible on the right-hand side of the painting, but appears simply to be part of the background.

“You can see it when you know what you’re looking for,” said Bruno Mottin, a curator in the research department of the Center of Research and Restoration of the Museums of France, known as C2RMF. He spoke at a news conference with researchers from the National Research Council of Canada.

Mr. Mottin said such transparent robes were worn by expecting or nursing mothers in 16th-century Italy. The robe’s reappearance in the “Mona Lisa” would dovetail with scholarly research indicating that the painting might have been commissioned to commemorate the birth of Lisa Gherardini’s third child.

The imaging also shows, although less clearly, that some of the sitter’s hair was rolled into a small bun and tucked under a tiny bonnet with an attached veil. (The images are too cloudy to be reproduced on newsprint.)

“That is not surprising,” Mr. Mottin said. “The bonnet was usually worn by women in the 16th century.”

More generally, the researchers said they realized that centuries of grime had obscured some elements of the painting.

“You’re seeing a lot more fine detail, showing that this remarkable painting is actually more remarkable than we believed,” said John M. Taylor, an imaging scientist and conservator with the National Research Council of Canada.

Mr. Mottin said that two pieces of clothing had faded from view, largely because of the application of now-discolored layers of lacquer over the centuries.

While the “Mona Lisa” has become famous for the sitter’s calm, some say enigmatic, smile, it appears that the composition was not always so restful. For example, the new images show that at one point one of her hands was painted in a clenched rather than a relaxed position.

“It was as if she was going to get up from a chair,” Mr. Mottin said of the version Leonardo ultimately changed.

David Rosand, a Renaissance art historian at Columbia University, said it was not surprising that the “Mona Lisa” contained hidden secrets. “This is a painting that has never been cleaned, that is remarkably dirty,” he said. “This is exactly what one would expect.”

For security and conservation reasons, scholars have rarely been able to view the painting other than through heavy glass, the researchers noted.

Indeed, Mr. Mottin, whose laboratory is within the Louvre palace complex, said that the “Mona Lisa” last received a complete examination after being vandalized in 1956.

Among other cutting-edge technologies, the scientists used a newly developed Canadian laser camera to construct an extremely detailed three-dimensional model of the painting.

It reveals that while the “Mona Lisa” may be old and dirty, it is not, as had long been thought, particularly fragile.

Mona Lisa videos – Video clips of Mona Lisa programmes

Mona Lisa videos and excerpts from Art DVDs are available all over YouTube and other video websites. I include some of the better ones below, all are subject to copyright.

Mona Lisa ‘happy’, computer finds

Mona Lisa article – Mona Lisa ‘happy’, computer finds – taken from here.

A computer has been used to decipher the enigmatic smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, concluding that she was mainly happy.

The painting was analysed by a University of Amsterdam computer using “emotion recognition” software.

It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, New Scientist magazine was told.

The computer rated features such as the curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes.

The program, developed with researchers at the University of Illinois, US, draws on a database of young female faces to derive an average “neutral” expression.

The software uses this average expression as the standard for comparisons.

The New Scientist says that software capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user’s mood.

Popular painting

Possibly the most famous portrait of all time, Mona Lisa’s cryptic expression has intrigued art lovers for five centuries.

In 2003, a scientist from Harvard University said the way the human eye processes visual information meant the smile was only apparent when the viewer looked at other parts of the painting.

The painting, which is on public display in the Louvre in Paris, was painted between 1503-1506.

It was thought to be named after the sitter, most likely the Florentine wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

The Mona Lisa features in the opening of Dan Brown’s hit novel The da Vinci Code when a Louvre curator is found dead near the painting.