Mona Lisa face swap

Where this one comes from

Leonardo da Vinci began this portrait of Lisa del Giocondo in Florence around 1503 and was still adjusting it years later. It hung in French royal collections for centuries and became a global celebrity only after it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and the empty wall made front pages everywhere.

What is in the picture

The crop is head and shoulders, so what sits either side of her is the landscape: a road winding down on the left, water and a hazed blue ridge on the right, and a horizon that does not line up across her shoulders. Her eyebrows are gone — whether Leonardo left them out or a later cleaning took them is still argued. The panel is poplar, and five centuries have cracked its surface into a fine net you can see from across a room.

When people use it

It is the shorthand for a face that is hiding what it thinks. People reach for it when someone answers a direct question with a small polite smile, when a reply says nothing at all, or when a photo is technically pleasant and completely unreadable.

How your face lands in it

The half-smile lives in the blurred shadow at the corners of the mouth rather than in the expression, so a neutral face comes out of this one looking like it has decided something about you. Her hair falls either side of the face with no hat or headdress in the way, which lets long hair sit naturally and makes short hair read as a choice. Everything below the collarbone stays hers.

Mona Lisa — Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503-1519. The artist died in 1519, so the work is in the public domain worldwide, and a faithful photograph of a flat public-domain painting carries no new copyright. Source

Also in: Paintings · Renaissance