The Mona Lisa has been the source of controversy for decades, with people wondering "who posed for da Vinci?" "Is this the original painting or a fake?" and "Is the painting really hiding some secret meaning behind that smile?"
A new discovery didn't reveal the answer to all of these questions, but it apparently proved the portrait hanging in The Louvre is the real deal- and there are three more portraits hidden underneath.
(Image Link- Mona Lisa by Fernando Botero)
A French scientist named Pascal Cotte used a new method of light based layer analysis called the Layer Amplification Method to examine what lies beneath the paint:
The method involves a multispectral camera projecting intense lights on to the painting while measuring the reflections, helping look for what happened between the paint layers.
Cotte believes one of the hidden portraits is the actual painting of Lisa del Giocondo, the woman thought to be portrayed in the Mona Lisa.
-Via Epoch Times