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April 25, 2006, 03:42 PM ET
No Sex Change for Mona Lisa
Computer analysis has already revealed that Mona Lisa was in a good mood when she sat for Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous portrait. Now, further study has yielded another hold-on-to-your-seats revelation: Mona Lisa was—wait for it!—probably a woman.
Using facial-recognition software, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have determined there is a 60-percent chance that the model for the Mona Lisa was a woman (and a fairly robust 40-percent chance that the model was actually a man).
The researchers say they’re dealing in probability, not proof, but they may have helped debunk one longstanding legend about the Mona Lisa—that da Vinci painted a feminized version of himself. The team at Illinois compared Mona Lisa with one of da Vinci’s self-portraits and found few substantive similarities between the two faces. (Associated Press)
Categories: Research
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