Mona Lisa Selfie compiles just a fraction of the images taken by the six million annual visitors to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Read the rest

I didn't know that there was a famous copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. It's called "Prado's version" and has been on display in Madrid's Museo del Prado since 1819. According to Wikipedia, it was "considered for decades a worthless copy. However, after its restoration in 2012, the Prado's Mona Lisa was claimed to be the earliest replica of Leonardo's masterpiece." In fact, "the replica was discovered to be possibly painted simultaneously by a student of Leonardo in the same studio where da Vinci painted his own Mona Lisa." Over at Reddit, where I learned about this, commenters overwhelmingly prefer the Prado version:

...much more pleasing

Her neck is more elegant and the folds in the clothing are incredible

At least Prado managed to capture some eye brows!

...she has an attitude

The one on the left is way better

I like the folds better with the Prado.

I prefer the Prado version, the face is much cuter.

Just toss the DaVinci one away, I say. The one on the left is much nicer.

Looks like the student surpassed the teacher

What do you think? Read the rest

Was the Mona Lisa one of the earliest 3D artworks? Scientists studying the painting and a slightly different version possibly painted by Da Vinci or his students think the intent might have been to create a stereoscopic pair. From Discovery News:

(The University of Bamberg researchers) found that the horizontal difference between the two paintings was about 2.7 inches (69 millimeters), which is close to the average distance between a person's two eyes. (When a person observes an object, each eye sees a slightly different perspective of the object, both of which are sent to the brain and transformed into the three-dimensional representation of the object that we "see.")

(Discovery News, thanks Bob Pescovitz!) Read the rest