The Secrets of the Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa -

bewitching,

seductive,

world-famous.

In the minds of millions, she is the ultimate work of art -

endlessly photographed and admired.

Yet, behind the enigmatic smile,

she remains a mystery.

Who was she?

Why was she painted?

And what has made her the world's most famous painting?

After 500 years in the spotlight

the Mona Lisa is finally giving up her secrets.

'Centuries-old documents are at last revealing long-forgotten truths.'

This is wonderful. Ooh! I've got a shiver down my spine.

State-of-the-art technology is taking us

beneath the painted surface

to decode astonishing new evidence.

That's extraordinary - wow!

That's quite a big discovery, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

This investigation -

the first full forensic examination

of the latest discoveries -

takes me round the world in the hunt

for the truth about Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece.

'With exclusive access and some extraordinary encounters...'

The first impression when I came in was...

I did well not to jump backwards in shock!

'..these revelations will change everything we thought we knew

about history's most enigmatic work of art...'

That's great. So we just made a new discovery.

'..and unlock the secrets of the Mona Lisa.'

All of this together marks an extraordinary moment

in the history of art, but more than that,

this is quite simply one of the stories of the century.

500 years ago a man painted a woman.

The man was Leonardo da Vinci -

artist, inventor, genius -

and the result of his work

was the inscrutable portrait we now know as the Mona Lisa.

'It's a masterpiece,

'but one of the few works he actually finished.'

So what draws us to the Mona Lisa?

She's not a famous monarch or a legendary historical figure.

We know hardly anything about her.

So what is it about this picture that's gripped the human imagination

for so many centuries?

'I want to begin my investigation

'by comparing notes with a detective

'who's been on the case for more than 30 years.

'One of the world's leading experts on Leonardo da Vinci,

'Oxford professor Martin Kemp has spent much of his life

'obsessed by the mystery of the Mona Lisa.'

What do you think is the key to the Mona Lisa's extraordinary

stature as without doubt

the world's most famous painting?

Well, there has to be something inherent in the picture.

Some things are famous for being famous.

We live in an age of celebrity

and lots of celebrities are famous for being famous,

but they're not going to last.

This has gone on for ages.

It is just extraordinary.

And you've got this sense

of something which is beyond pigment

and beyond a good likeness and being beyond a face,

and it just has that totally uncanny living presence.

It was very daring at the time

for a woman in a portrait to look at you.

You know, women's portraits simply didn't do that,

and I think the ambiguity, the... the tease - the visual tease -

is something that Leonardo absolutely cultivated.

Look at the Mona Lisa

and you can't help feeling there's more going on than meets the eye.

If her teasing smile's a question mark,

the painting's a riddle.

What makes a human being live and breathe?

What forces govern the world we live in?

Leonardo thought about these questions as deeply as anyone,

and behind this breathtakingly lifelike image,

lay years of investigation into spheres of knowledge

like geology and anatomy, some of which

were forbidden by the church.

Tantalising evidence for the research that went into the Mona Lisa

lies hidden in Windsor Castle.

Amongst the gems of the Royal Collection

is an intriguing clue to the genesis of the portrait.

A page from what might be called the real da Vinci Code.

If you want to see, or have some sense of,

just how much work there was behind the surface of the picture

then this is a great place to start.

It's a sheet of drawings by Leonardo's own hand.

And what does it contain in faint outline?

Look here...

It's a bit like the Cheshire Cat,

it's the Mona Lisa's smile

without the Mona Lisa attached.

It may well have been Leonardo's first gropings towards his idea

for the painting.

It's a series of studies of the human mouth,

the motions of the mouth.

How the mouth puckers.

How the mouth...bares its teeth.

You have a very strong sense that for Leonardo

every picture is a kind of encyclopaedia entry

and this is just that part of it

dealing with the mouth.

It's just the tip of the iceberg.

The Mona Lisa is the work into which Leonardo poured everything he knew

about humanity and the world that surrounds us

with its ceaseless play of light and shade.

But there's a mystery there, too,

and it's staring us in the face.

'Who is the woman with the enigmatic smile?'

It's a question that has fuelled all kinds of speculation

ranging from the ingenious to the crackpot.

She's a pregnant mother-to-be,

she's a prostitute,

she's even a man in drag.

But if you look beyond the theories

there are clues to her true identity.

Florence, 1500.

After many years away

Leonardo da Vinci has returned

to the city of his youth.

He's come back to work on ambitious military projects

for powerful men.

He says he's too busy to paint portraits of wealthy aristocrats

who clamour after him.

Yet according to one writer

Leonardo somehow finds time to paint the portrait, not of a noblewoman,

but of a humble merchant's wife called Lisa.

It was here that Leonardo da Vinci

began the most famous painting

in the world...

and it was here that Giorgio Vasari -

the inventor of the very idea of the Renaissance,

the author of the very first book about the Renaissance -

produced Exhibit A in the case of the Mona Lisa.

The very first account of the painting.

Who was she?

She was the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a rich merchant.

He commissioned Leonardo to create her portrait,

and Leonardo responded with a picture, says Vasari,

"So miraculously lifelike

"that it seems to be made of flesh, not paint."

"Leonardo," he says, "wanted to avoid the melancholy

"that dominates so many other portraits

"so he employed musicians, entertainers, buffoons

"to keep her amused."

So there you have it -

the wife of Francesco del Giocondo,

and the smile caused by

entertainers hired by the artist.

An open-and-shut case.

Or is it?

How can we be sure that Vasari was right,

and that Leonardo did indeed paint Lisa del Giocondo?

After all, Vasari wrote his account 30 years after Leonardo's death,

and although he did his homework here in Florence,

he never disclosed his sources.

So could it just be hearsay?

Some inaccurate local legend?

For centuries there was no way of telling.

'Then suddenly new evidence emerged

'from a completely unexpected source.'

In 2006, a research scholar

working in the University Library of Heidelberg

turned up this.

What it is, is a page from a copy of Cicero,

the ancient Roman author,

a book that was once owned

here in Florence by a man called Agostino Vespucci.

And not only does it have Cicero's text,

but it's got Vespucci's commentaries

and this particular passage is crucial.

Because in it Cicero is discussing Apelles,

the ancient Greek artist,

and his remarks prompt Vespucci to make his own notes -

his marginal note -

and what he writes is a kind of bombshell

in the history of Leonardo studies.

He says "Apelles, ha!

"He did just the same thing as Leonardo

"in his portrait of Lisa del Giocondo."

And best of all, there's a date -

"October, 1503."

So this was written almost immediately after Vespucci

must have seen the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo

in Leonardo da Vinci's workshop.

This is gold dust, and it proves

that Vasari was definitely right in at least one sense all along.

Leonardo definitely did paint a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

There you have it.

Independent testimony from a man in Florence in 1503

who probably saw the picture still wet on the artist's easel.

But now there's another question.

Why did Leonardo paint Lisa

when the great and powerful couldn't coax a picture from him?

Why agree to paint this obscure woman?

One man has made it his life's work to uncover forgotten

secrets about Lisa.

Giuseppe Pallanti has found new details in the city archive.

Historical dynamite,

beginning with the house where Lisa,

daughter of the Gherardinis, was born.

On this street, this is the street where the Mona Lisa once lived.

Yes, Lisa lived in the dark and narrow street of Florence.

What was her family background?

SPEAKS ITALIAN

So they were small...as it were, labourers?

-They never had their own house in Florence?

-No.

Giuseppe's discoveries have deepened the mystery.

If Lisa's origins were so humble why did the notoriously choosy

Leonardo consent to paint her?

In another part of town, Giuseppe believes he's found the answer.

The place is there.

It is important for another reason,

because in front of this building lived Ser Piero, Leonardo's father.

Wha...? Hang on, say that again.

-Lisa Gherardini was living here, at the time...

-Yes.

..Leonardo da Vinci's father was living there?

Yes.

How incredible!

So he was... You're saying that Francesco del Giocondo,

the merchant, he was actually a client of Leonardo's father?

-Yes.

-Well, this is all new.

-Yes.

-This is all new.

For the first time we have a concrete connection

between Leonardo and Lisa.

Not only were they neighbours,

their families did business together.

And there's more.

Giuseppe tells me that according to police records of the time,

Francesco had a bit of a reputation.

Described as "garoso" meaning swaggering -

he wasn't just a merchant on the rise

but an aggressive deal-maker

who'd stop at almost nothing to get his way.

Maybe this is the real reason

Leonardo agreed to paint his wife.

Maybe Francesco made him an offer

he couldn't refuse.

In the parish church of San Lorenzo

there's another crucial piece of evidence.

Something that had slipped through the net of history

until just a few years ago

when Giuseppe found it.

The record of Mona Lisa's death.

Wonderful thing.

The handwriting isn't very easy to follow

because the entries in these books weren't actually made

by notaries like Leonardo da Vinci's father,

they were actually made by the priests in the church,

but I think I have found her.

Here she is.

This is wonderful. Ooh! I've got a shiver down my spine.

"Lisa donna fu di Francesco del Giocondo..."

So Lisa the wife of Francesco del Giocondo...

.."mori"...

..died on the 15th of July...

..1542.

Just...I think what I love about this is...this is truth.

What could be more true than the record of somebody's death?

She was a real person.

She was a real person.

And there's one other sentence in this entry

which my friend Pallanti didn't mention.

It says that she was buried in Saint Ursula - he told me that -

but what he didn't say is this last sentence

"dulsa tutto il capito"

Four words.

She took with her the whole "capito".

What that means is that her body

was followed by the whole body

of the church of San Lorenzo.

So what is conjured up by this, is a very, very grand funeral,

and for this brief moment in July, 1542,

she was a very, very important person in the life of the city.

Everybody in Florence would have known that Mona Lisa had passed away.

A spectacular funeral.

Dozens of canons, chaplains and clerics.

The whole del Giocondo clan walking with Lisa's coffin.

Francesco had died five years earlier

but he made sure he provided for all this pomp and ceremony in his will

where she is described as

"his beloved, faithful wife".

Lisa del Giocondo was laid to rest in the now ruined convent of Saint Ursula.

Beyond here we can't follow her

though we've learned a lot.

Leonardo definitely knew Lisa,

definitely painted her portrait.

But if one riddle's been answered,

there's still another mystery to solve.

How can we be certain that Leonardo's portrait of Lisa

and the portrait in the Louvre are one and the same?

So what are the facts?

According to Vasari,

Leonardo painted Lisa smiling in Florence.

Vespucci's marginal notes confirm that it happened in 1503.

The picture in the Louvre shows a woman smiling.

So far, so good.

But other things don't add up.

Vasari describes eyebrows

but the Louvre portrait

doesn't have eyebrows.

Vasari tells us Leonardo painted Lisa for Francesco del Giocondo.

But Francesco never owned the portrait we now call the Mona Lisa.

Leonardo had it with him when he died.

Most troubling of all is an eyewitness account

written by a man called Antonio de Beatis.

He was actually shown the picture that's now in the Louvre

by Leonardo himself at the end of his life.

Leonardo said he'd been asked to paint this portrait

not by Francesco del Giocondo

but by someone completely different.

A noble patron, Giuliano de' Medici.

It simply doesn't make sense.

It's almost as if we might be talking about different paintings.

So I'm beginning to wonder whether it's not possible Leonardo

did paint two versions of the same painting

on several occasions.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's not possible that he did indeed

finish his portrait of the Mona Lisa here in Florence,

that he did indeed give it to Francesco del Giocondo

and that the portrait of Mona Lisa in Paris is a second version.

Is it possible that there might be more than one Mona Lisa?

The idea is not as strange as you might think.

Leonardo did habitually revisit the same subject more than once.

I've come to Singapore to see for the first time a picture

that might actually be Leonardo's first version of the painting.

It's owned by an anonymous consortium of businessmen,

and is currently locked away

deep in the bowels of a state-of-the-art

high security storage facility.

So could THIS be the first Mona Lisa?

I've come 7,000 miles to see you.

Blimey.

The background's...

You might almost say a kind of roughing in,

but the face...

The face is really something.

She's younger, she's smiling.

I think there's a lot to be said for first impressions,

and the first impression when I came in was,

I did well not to jump backwards in shock.

It's too good, in my opinion,

for any of the other school of Leonardo painters.

Very dangerous, things like this.

Very dangerous to say

"This is definitely painted by Leonardo da Vinci."

Well, I can't say that, but...

I think it's not beyond the realms of possibility

that this is the picture that Francesco del Giocondo

took and then Leonardo goes off, paints another picture

based on the memory of this picture.

And that's the Mona Lisa we know in the Louvre.

It's very teasing that smile, isn't it?

Very teasing.

This version of the Mona Lisa

first hit the headlines in 1914.

British art dealer, Hugh Blaker,

bought it from a private family collection

and was convinced he'd stumbled across an early Leonardo.

He kept it in his Isleworth studios

and it became known as the Isleworth Mona Lisa.

One thing in its favour was its similarity

to this pencil sketch copy of the Mona Lisa,

done in Florence in 1504

by Leonardo's contemporary Raphael,

which seems to show how the painting looked in its original state.

Yet after a century of supporters, detractors

and different owners,

opinion on the Isleworth painting is still divided.

One man who is convinced that Leonardo painted two Mona Lisas

is Jean-Pierre Isbouts.

'He was so impressed by the Isleworth portrait

'he wrote a book about it.'

So what would lead you to think

that the Isleworth picture

was indeed painted in 1503?

What is to say that it wasn't painted in 1553?

Well, I don't know about you, but when you talk about a copy

usually a copy tries to imitate the original.

This is not a copy.

There are so many different things about this particular Isleworth version

that do not appear in the Louvre version.

Let's take one example - the columns.

The portrait is framed by two robust Doric columns.

Why do we know that those columns existed in 1503 and not later on?

Because there is Raphael!

He makes a sketch.

And what do we have on both sides?

We have the columns that appear in the Isleworth,

they do not appear in the Louvre version.

Let's talk about the record written by De Beatis,

the secretary to Cardinal d'Aragon who visited Leonardo in 1516.

-Which is seriously puzzling.

-Which is seriously puzzling.

But here is... Here we have an eyewitness account.

Here they are in the room with Leonardo and he says,

"Yeah, this was done at the request of Giuliano de' Medici.

Instigation - "istigazione."

Istigazione.

I think what he was doing at this time, is give Giuliano credit.

Giuliano bailed Leonardo out,

when Leonardo was without a mentor, penniless

and that's when Leonardo -

because of the patronage and the financial support of Giuliano -

finds the time to create this new meditation, if you will -

the Louvre version.

So your explanation would be,

"Well, here we are, two different explanations,

-"but that's not so weird if you think there are two different pictures."

-Exactly.

Jean-Pierre firmly believes this could be Leonardo's first Mona Lisa

done for husband Francesco.

But, if so, why would it be unfinished?

Well, we know Leonardo was slow

and Francesco was impatient,

so perhaps he just snatched it away from Leonardo

once his beloved Lisa's face was complete.

A barrage of scientific tests

have been carried out on this tantalising picture.

The canvas was carbon dated to around the right period.

Multiple tiny paint samples are consistent

with the paints Leonardo used.

X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet scans

have found nothing to disprove it

as an early Mona Lisa.

But that's the problem.

All that conventional tests can do

is rule out a possible Leonardo.

What about positive confirmation?

An eminent scientist based in San Diego, California,

has been looking for a solution.

Hello.

Good to see you, Andrew.

'Dr John Asmus is a well respected nuclear physicist,

'and a pioneer in the analysis of historic paintings.'

He's one of very few who've been allowed to examine

the Louvre Mona Lisa,

and that's why the owners

of the Isleworth Mona Lisa,

tracked him down.

I started receiving phone calls

from a series of attorneys

in Switzerland

and they wanted me to look at a painting

and, finally, we found that I was going to be on a train

from Milan to Geneva

and they asked me to get off the train in Lausanne

and take a look at their painting

and so they met me at the train station

and they popped the bonnet

of an automobile

and there was a Mona Lisa in...in the trunk.

And the attorney asked me

"Do you think this Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo?"

And my exact words were,

"How would I know?"

So I got out my instamatic camera

and took a photograph of the painting in the trunk

and it was that image that I then compared

with the Louvre Mona Lisa.

A few years ago Dr Asmus developed a new test

to authenticate paintings by Rembrandt.

It compares the subtle distribution of light and shadow

measured as histograms

to isolate an artist's unique way of painting.

I think it's a way of trying to quantify the artist's eye.

Every artist has certain effects

that he's trying to accomplish,

and we used Rembrandt as a test case

and the results were rather encouraging.

We came up with some general rules

as to how Rembrandt

did his blending and his selection of pigments.

So I tried that same technique on the Isleworth Mona Lisa,

comparing it with the Louvre Mona Lisa

and I was... I was stunned.

The correlation between those two histograms

was 99%.

Stronger than it was between any histograms

of any of the Rembrandt self-portraits that we'd looked at.

How amazing.

'This demonstrates that the technique for blending light and shade

'in each face appears uncannily similar.

'John plans to build a much bigger database

'of Leonardo works with which to compare them.

'His results are impressive.

'But there's something still troubling me.'

I would love to believe that

that softly emerging face coming out of darkness

really is young Mona Lisa.

I'd love to believe that.

But at the moment, for me, it's that too-good-to-be-true syndrome.

It's a little bit too good.

It's troubling.

When I look at that chart that they've done

of where they've taken the paint samples from.

They've the taken the paint samples from everywhere

except that beguiling face...

..which is the most compelling part of the whole picture.

It's the part that makes you think, "Yes!"

"This could be the young Mona Lisa."

I'm just wondering whether it's possible

that some very skilful,

careful restorer,

some time before John Asmus saw it in the boot of that car...

..didn't just bring that face...

..up.

Didn't just make whatever ghost or trace of possibly a Mona Lisa copy

into something so much more compelling to the modern eye.

To me NOT to test THAT...

It's like a detective and his team

coming to investigate the scene of a crime,

the scene of a murder,

and fingerprinting every square inch of it

but forgetting to take fingerprints from

the knife on the bed covered with blood.

I could be wrong.

Maybe Leonardo did paint this face in 1503

while Lisa sat in front of him,

but until the face is tested, doubt remains,

and, to me, she just looks a bit too 20th-century.

But I'm still convinced that Leonardo did paint two Mona Lisas.

If the Isleworth painting isn't the earlier version,

then it's either lost

or still out there somewhere.

And believe it or not,

now there's a new lead.

The reported discovery

of another Mona Lisa in St Petersburg, Russia.

This really is a plunge into the unknown.

All we've been told is that a wealthy Russian art collector -

identity a secret -

recently acquired a painting

that might be the missing link to the mystery.

We haven't yet been told where it is,

and then, at the last minute,

we're given an address -

a place with a dubious past.

Certainly strange.

This building was created in the 19th century.

This room is a recreation

of an old Russian hunting lodge.

It survives because the KGB made it their headquarters

during the Communist years.

Here she is.

So what is this?

What is this?

All I know about this picture

is that it was purchased by a Russian art collector

from a very old and established American family,

who'd had it since the end of the 18th century,

and has hardly been seen since.

And what's the status of this picture?

Smaller.

The columns

are more complete

than they are in the version in the Louvre.

You see, they've got me going!

Now, I'm saying "The version in the Louvre."

The version in the Louvre...(!)

The Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

She's enigmatic.

She's removed.

She's distant.

Is she a copy?

Not sure.

This picture looks tantalisingly close to the picture in the Louvre,

so many details are the same,

but is this Leonardo's lost earlier version?

As with the Isleworth picture,

scientific tests have been done by Dr Chiara Matteucci

of the University of Bologna,

who's flown to Russia to share her results.

SPEAKS ITALIAN

This is the radiocarbon dating of the canvas? Si.

Which shows a 95.4% probability

that the canvas is between 1490 and 1670.

So the canvas could well be correct.

Si. OK.

-Rossa?

-Rossa.

Oh, that's the ground. Well, that's very clear.

But as far as I understand it...

..Leonardo da Vinci himself

worked on a classic Italian

renaissance ground of white, is that right?

Si.

'The presence of a red ground, the very first layer of paint,

'seems to discount Leonardo's hand.

'But it's Chiara's next discovery that really changes the picture.

'A chemical not used before 1600.'

I think Chiara's done all the research we need to know.

So the barium allows us to place this canvas very precisely,

1620 to 1680. And probably in Paris.

So all the painters around Paris got this ground from this one guy

and put it on their canvas.

So, more and more that I talk to you, I feel..

So this Mona Lisa isn't a Leonardo, but a mid-17th century French copy.

'In fact, there are dozens of copies.

'It's a real problem if you believe,

'as I think you have to, given the conflicting evidence,

'that Leonardo did paint two Mona Lisas.

'What we're looking for, then, is Leonardo's image of young Lisa,

'as described by Vasari,

'as sketched by Raphael,

'which must predate the famous picture in the Louvre.

'So, where can it be?

'I still believe that I can get to the bottom of the mystery.

'Because there's one very strong lead I haven't yet followed up.

'One more destination.

'Paris.'

'A scientist turned art detective

'claims he can finally explain the discrepancies.

'He believes the secrets of the Mona Lisa

'lie not in other versions of the portrait,

'but inside the Mona Lisa itself.

'And he reckons he can prove it.'

Pascal.

Welcome.

'Pascal Cotte is one of the world's leading experts

'in the analysis of paintings.

'He's a man in Leonardo's own image.

'A self-taught physicist,

'the brilliant inventor of a new technique

'that's unlocked the secrets of paintings by Rubens,

'Rembrandt, Picasso and many others.'

His work on another Leonardo painting,

the Lady with an Ermine,

revealed earlier versions of the composition

hidden beneath its surface that rewrote art history.

'But his great obsession is the Mona Lisa.

'Faithfully reproduced here in his studio.'

In 2004, Pascal was invited by the Louvre to scan the painting.

His task? Simply to identify the picture's original colours

hidden beneath the discolourations of time.

But Pascal's technique also revealed

that there was far more going on beneath the surface.

For the last decade, he's worked in secret,

decoding those discoveries.

And now he's ready to share them.

So our goal is to peel, like an onion, all the layer of paint,

to reconstruct the chronology of the construction of the painting.

So, is this new? Is this a new...?

This is a new technique, absolutely.

Pascal's secret weapon is his ground-breaking multispectral camera.

An invention truly worthy of Leonardo.

13 different wavelengths of colour are projected onto the picture.

Each penetrating the paint surface to a different depth.

The camera captures the reflections,

generating over three billion bits of data and thousands of images.

By analysing each image, shown in black and white,

Pascal can reveal a painting's secrets layer by layer.

His first discovery in the Mona Lisa is buried deep within the painting.

What we discover, we discover that the head...was bigger.

-So you...you see a shadow of a bigger head.

-Yes, I can see.

Mm. You can see also that the nose...is double here.

Oh!

Wow!

So once, she had a larger head.

And I discovered this hand, much more bigger.

(Wow!)

Pascal has pieced together several previously unknown details

that lie beneath the Louvre portrait as we know it.

Marked in red, they seem to be elements of a larger first portrait

that never got beyond a draft stage.

But that's just the beginning of Pascal's discoveries.

So now we continue with one other layer.

Ah. Here we are.

What on earth is that?

What is it?

This is a hairpin.

Like this one.

-So, you found...

-Something like this.

-..you found a...

With that little bit of your magic light camera,

you found a missing hairpin?

Now you know there is a hairpin, you can see it.

Hah!

Because you know.

But, yes... No, exactly. How fascinating!

And more than that, if you look around the head,

you discover 12 hairpins.

ANDREW LAUGHS

'The hairpins with pearls make no sense on the first large portrait,

'but Pascal has found something else that appears to be connected to them.

'Tiny rows of dots, known as spolveri.

'They seem to suggest an elaborate headdress.

'Intriguingly, a type of headdress that, as far as we know,

'was only ever shown on the heads of saints or Madonnas.'

This is a painting of a headdress

that have nothing to do with Mona Lisa.

-Nothing to do with Mona Lisa?

-Nothing to do with Mona Lisa.

'The spolveri hidden inside the Mona Lisa have never been seen before.

'They're concrete proof of the way Leonardo constructed a picture.

'He would have begun with a preparatory drawing.

'Marked the lines on tracing paper with a sharp point,

'then transferred those outlines on to the wood with coal dust.

'But what happened to the headdress?

'Pascal's next piece of evidence

'suggests it was deliberately removed.'

So now I discovered this hatching.

-Do you see this hatching?

-This is another layer of your...?

-Yeah, another...

-Of the onion.

-So, this is Leonardo with his rubber?

-Yes.

You see, it's totally different from the cracks.

It's not craquelure, no.

You see, this is clearly to erase what is behind.

It's very important. Because that explains how Leonardo,

from one stage, goes to another stage.

'Pascal's scans are crucial evidence of the way Leonardo worked.

'Building up a painting stage by stage.

'Above the scratchings, Pascal reveals

'the first impression of yet another layer.

'The ghostly imprint of a face.

'Like a Leonardo Turin Shroud.'

-Is that another head?

-Yes.

How many heads is that so far?

Er...this is the number three.

-So the big head...

-The big head...

-The pearl head.

-The pearl head.

-And then there's another head.

-Yes.

Now the...the eyes.

So it's a wonderful proof.

I discovered two crosses just here.

Oh! ANDREW LAUGHS

That's extraordinary!

And these crosses do not match with Mona Lisa's...glance.

-No.

-No.

'The crosses clearly mark a different set of pupils

'looking in a different direction.'

-The face behind Mona Lisa...

-Mm.

..the face is turned 14 degrees in the right direction.

So there she is, she's looking like that.

-So she should be like that.

-Yeah.

-More like that.

Also, eyebrows. This...

Can I just see this? Because this is an important point.

Because Vasari says specifically, you know,

that the eyebrows are beautifully painted.

Yes. These eyebrows...

And the Mona Lisa, as we see her, doesn't have eyebrows.

-So, have you found...?

-You can see it. Yeah, look, here.

So there are the eyebrows!

And here, you have another mouth.

Look at this mouth. Nothing to do with Mona Lisa.

Absolutely amazing.

She's barely smiling.

Do you see? Because she...she turns the head on the left,

the mouth is a little smaller.

-You see?

-Quite a lot smaller.

-Yeah.

ANDREW LAUGHS

So, Pascal, you've found a complete face.

-Yes.

-Inside...

-Inside.

-..the Mona Lisa.

-Yes.

ANDREW LAUGHS Wow!

That's quite a big discovery, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

-Yes, it is.

-Yes, it is.

Pascal's work has revealed for the first time in 500 years,

a detailed earlier portrait by Leonardo da Vinci.

It's the same size as the face we see now,

but turned by 14 degrees.

There's clear evidence of a different, swept-back hairstyle.

Elaborate ties at the top of an earlier sleeve are clearly visible.

There's even a suggestion that she once held a blanket in her lap.

Is this the portrait of Lisa I've been looking for?

So throughout my journey, I thought,

well, it seems as though

they're talking about two different pictures.

You seem to be saying to me that, yes, there are two Mona Lisas,

-but they happen to be on the same piece of wood.

-Yes.

So this must surely be...Lisa del Giocondo.

-Of course.

-Francesco's wife.

I agree with you. It's...

This is a real portrait of Mrs Lisa Gherardini.

Pascal's pioneering work

marks an extraordinary moment in the history of art.

By piecing together all the details, then decoding the data

to identify the original pigments used by Leonardo,

Pascal has been able to construct a digital Photofit of the image.

It's a perfect match with the historical record.

But if this computer image represents the original portrait of Mona Lisa,

it's a portrait her husband never received.

Instead, Leonardo went on to paint

the world's most famous picture over the top.

So there were two Mona Lisa's all along.

But how do we make sense of these discoveries?

And what are we now to make of Leonardo's masterpiece?

'In search of the final piece to the puzzle,

'I'm meeting a woman who's spent years reconstructing the scene

'of that day back in 1503

'when Leonardo started to paint Lisa.'

Leading expert on renaissance hairstyles and costumes,

Elisabetta Gnignera,

has based her work closely on Pascal's findings.

Every Renaissance fashion can be precisely pinpointed.

Whether to Rome in 1512, or Florence in 1503.

So by recreating the costume Pascal found

in the painting beneath the painting,

Elisabetta can place and date it very precisely.

Her results are a revelation.

Looking at the fashions shown in these other contemporary portraits,

this lady perfectly fits with the historical image

of a wealthy Florentine lady

of the early years of the 16th century.

I cannot see any inconsistencies.

So, this must be Lisa del Giocondo as Raphael painted her?

Yes, this is very close.

The closest version we know to the Raphael sketch.

It's like a Polaroid.

-It's like a Polaroid?

-Yeah.

Raphael had actually seen Leonardo's portrait of Lisa

when he drew this copy in 1504.

Apart from one slight difference, the veil over the bodice,

it's identical to Elisabetta's reconstruction

and Pascal's Photofit.

It's compelling evidence that Pascal has indeed found the first version,

Leonardo's original Lisa,

lurking beneath the finished work.

But where does all this leave the picture we see today?

So, when you look at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, as she is now,

from the point of view of costume, what do you see?

To me, she is not a real person

because there are so many details which go in this sense.

Mm. Can you give me an example?

Yeah. The long hair worn on her shoulder.

This wouldn't be conceivable,

unless you were the very high ranks,

or it was a posthumous portrait.

What about this sort of sash of drapery that comes over her shoulder?

-The twist.

-The twist.

-Yeah.

This is the most interesting element in Louvre's Gioconda.

Because Greco-Roman classical art devoted such detail

only on one shoulder only.

To Venus, Venus,

and virtues like purity, chastity, faith.

So that...that beautiful strand of drapery

that seems to continue the flow of the river

-and the landscape behind...

-Yeah.

That is not something that a real woman would have worn?

Not at all, even if it was a...

-So, it's more like an attribute of a goddess?

-Yes.

So the Louvre painting shows an idealised woman,

maybe a posthumous portrait.

Surely, then, she can no longer be Mona Lisa.

Because Mona Lisa outlived Leonardo.

Wow! Heh-heh!

'Now, for Elisabetta, the moment of truth.

'As the results of years of research and hard work finally come together,

'we can at last see how Lisa del Giocondo,

'the original Mona Lisa, might have looked.'

-So, Elisabetta...

-Yeah?

-You have made the sleeves that Pascal found.

-Yeah.

-And this is the line, you've recreated the line.

-Yeah, exactly.

'It's been an elaborate process,

'but it leads to a genuine insight

'into Leonardo's obsessive relationship with this painting.

'The key is in the colours,

'which have been exactly matched to Pascal's calculations.'

The dress for the bodice, he found a...

-a greenish-grey pigment.

-Mm.

And also, there's leaves.

We know how Leonardo would call this colour,

which was called Leonato.

That is, the colours of the lion's fur.

-Leonato colour.

-I never knew that, I never knew that.

You know what that makes me think? It makes me think, when you say that,

that this is...this is Leonardo...

Because, of course, he didn't sign pictures,

but this is Leonardo's way of signing the painting.

-Exactly.

-He loved to play games with words.

-Exactly.

-So the colour...

That's great. The colour, Leonato,

-and the knot pattern, Vinceri.

-Yeah.

-Leonato da Vinci.

-Yeah.

It could be, no? We are not joking. I agree with you totally.

-You agree with me?

-Yeah, exactly. Because...

'For me, the presence of a hidden signature

'would answer a nagging question.

'Why didn't he finish his first version

'and give it to Francesco?

'Knotting his name into her bodice, it's like an act of possession.

'As if Leonardo knew this was always destined to be more than a portrait.

'No-one's painting but his own.'

If we go one, two, three,

uno, due, tre, you look at me.

Uno, due, tre.

Our investigation has revealed for the first time

what Leonardo's hidden earlier portrait might have looked like.

The portrait, surely, of the Florentine merchant's wife,

Lisa del Giocondo.

'We found a solution to the historic inconsistencies

'that have long baffled experts.

'And, it seems, we've discovered that the portrait in the Louvre

'may not be the Mona Lisa after all.'

So we're left with the million-dollar question.

Who is she?

The one piece of evidence that still stands out

is the eyewitness account of de Beatis,

who had it from Leonardo himself

that the woman we now see was painted at the behest of Giuliano de' Medici.

So, who replaced Mona Lisa in Leonardo's painting?

Did Giuliano commission a posthumous portrait?

Perhaps of a lost love idealised like a goddess?

'For me, there's only one candidate.

'A woman with whom Giuliano had a brief, passionate affair.

'A woman who tragically died giving birth to their son.

'A little boy who was still calling for her

'when Giuliano commissioned the picture.

'Her name was Pacifica Brandano.

'Could this be her?

'It's a romantic notion,

'but just as Leonardo never gave the picture to Francesco,

'he never gave it to Giuliano either.

'Instead, he kept the image of the woman he'd signed in code

'and made her more his own than ever.'

At the end of Leonardo's life,

the Mona Lisa, this shape-shifting picture

that had begun as the portrait of one woman

and then metamorphosed into another,

became something else again.

Namely, a work of art that transcended portraiture

and turned into an expression of all his knowledge, all his philosophy.

The painting's like a shimmering mosaic

in which Leonardo has pieced together all that he knows about nature

and about human nature.

And I think the key to it is that famous smile.

Leonardo's way of saying that while we might strive to understand

this vast cosmos that surrounds us,

in the end, it's our destiny to pass through life

as swiftly as the smile that flickers across a human face.

So the Mona Lisa really isn't Mona Lisa after all,

but something much more than that.

It's a painting of life itself,

as Leonardo had come to think of it.

His way of painting us all.