Interesting Facts

Leonardo Da Vinci has been credited with inventing the designer handbag. (It's believed he drew a sketch of an ornate leather accessory in 1497 while he was painting The Last Supper. Now a luxury Italian brand, Gherardini, has decided to manufacture a bag based on Leonardo's design - more than five centuries after his death. I guess the copyright has run out by now.) One for  +april sis .  

According to Pascal Cotte, a Parisian engineer, Mona Lisa once had eyebrows and eyelashes. (He dedicated around 3,000 hours to examining Leonardo Da Vinci's famous portrait and says that years of restoration work have eroded the facial hair. Using 240-megapixel scans, Mr Cotte, 49, says he can see traces of a left eyebrow long obscured from the naked eye by the efforts of the restorers. I wouldn't want my face examined on a 240-megapixel scan!  They'll be saying she had a moustache and beard next. Please, gentlemen, let us ladies have our little depilatory secrets.) 

If you look at the Mona Lisa carefully, you'll see she doesn't have any facial hair. (Now I don't mean just facial beardy / moustachy hair, I mean she doesn't have any eyebrows or eyelashes!  I hadn't even realised this until Pure Moon pointed it out on the forum!  Some people say it was normal in those days to pluck out facial hair, but ... there's another theory - see next post.)

Leonardo Da Vinci has been proved right, over 500 years after he sketched the design for the first parachute. (A British man, Adrian Nicholas, dropped from a hot air balloon 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) above the ground, after ignoring expert advice that the canvas and wood contraption would not fly. I love it when 'experts' are proved wrong!) Source - BBC

The Mona Lisa isn't a canvas painting. (She is actually painted on a wooden panel made of poplar.  She always looked a bit wooden to me.)