The Mysterious Mona Lisa

Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Mona Lisa, also called La Gioconda has captured society’s collective imagination. Her hold on the audience is so intense there is a widely known phenomenon called, The Mona Lisa Effect referring to the experience of feeling like the subject of an image is looking directly at the viewer no matter where one is standing in the room. Simply put, people feel like Mona Lisa is staring at them and her eyes follow them around the room. According to scientists at Bielefeld Unversity in Germany, La Gioconda does not look directly at the viewer. Her gaze is said to be about 15 degrees to the right looking at the viewer’s ear or over their shoulder. They concluded that ironically, The Mona Lisa does not demonstrate the Mona Lisa effect.

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