New Delhi, Oct 29 (PTI) While perfecting Mona Lisa'ssmile, Leonardo da Vinci spent his nights in the depths of ahospital's morgue, peeling the skin off cadavers and studyingthe muscles and nerves underneath, says a new book.
Da Vinci became fascinated about how a smile begins toform, and he analysed every possible movement of each part ofthe face to determine the origin of every nerve that controlseach facial muscle, Walter Isaacson writes in "Leonardo daVinci: A Biography".
Isaacson, a University Professor of History at Tulane whohas been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, andeditor of Time magazine, weaves a narrative that connects daVinci's art to his science.
"At the time when he was perfecting Lisa's smile,Leonardo was spending his nights in the depths of the morgueunder the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova (near his Florencestudio), peeling the skin off cadavers and exposing themuscles and nerves underneath," the book, published by Simon &Schuster, says.
Da Vinci was especially interested in knowing which ofthese nerves were related to the brain and how these wouldhelp in painting Mona Lisa's smile.
There is a mystery to the smile, Isaacson says.
"As we stare, it flickers. What is she thinking? Our eyesmove a bit, and her smile seems to change. The mysterycompounds. We look away, and the smile lingers in our minds,as it does in the collective mind of humanity. Never in apainting have motion and emotion, the paired touchstones ofLeonardo's art, been so intertwined," he writes.
Da Vinci discovered that the muscle that purses the lipsis the same muscle that forms the lower lip.
"Pucker your lower lip and you can see that this is true;it can pucker on its own, with or without the upper lip, butit is impossible to pucker the lip alone. It was a tinydiscovery, but for an anatomist who was also an artist,especially one who was in the midst of painting the 'MonaLisa', it was worth noting," the author says.
Other movements of the lips involve different muscles,including "those which bring the lips to a point, others whichspread them, and others which curl them back, others whichstraighten them out, others which twist them transversely, andothers which return them to their first position".
Then da Vinci drew a row of lips with the skin layerpeeled off. Even though the fine lines at the ends of themouth turn down almost imperceptibly, the impression is thatthe lips are smiling.
There is other science involved in the smile, Isaacsonsays.
"From his optics studies, Leonardo realised that lightrays do not come to a single point in the eye but instead hitthe whole area of the retina... With this knowledge, Leonardowas able to create an uncatchable smile, one that is elusiveif we are too intent on seeing it," he writes.
Scientists recently found a technical way to describe allof this.
"A clear smile is much more apparent in the low spatialfrequency images than in the high spatial frequency image,"according to Harvard Medical School neuroscientist MargaretLivingstone.
"Thus, if you look at the painting so that your gazefalls on the background or on 'Mona Lisa's' hands, yourperception of her mouth would be dominated by low spatialfrequencies, so it would appear much more cheerful than whenyou look directly at her mouth."A study at Sheffield Hallam University showed thatLeonardo used the same technique not only on "La BelleFerronniere" but also on the recently discovered drawing "LaBella Principessa", the book says. PTI ZMNSHD.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.