The Mona Lisa’s smile
First look at the Mona Lisa’s eyes, then stare straight at her mouth. Does her smile change?
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What most people do: Many people find the smile clearer when they look at the eyes.
What just happened (read it after the experiment)
Leonardo da Vinci painted the corners of the mouth with very soft shadows, which are easier to see out of the corner of your eye than head-on.
When you look at the eyes, your peripheral vision picks up those shadows, and the smile appears. When you stare at the mouth, your central vision, built for fine detail, loses them: the smile fades. That is the explanation proposed by the neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone in 2000.
The most famous smile in the world is partly an optical illusion.
More experiments
Sources
- Margaret Livingstone, “Is it warm? Is it real? Or just low spatial frequency?,” Science, 2000.