Was Mona Lisa Pregnant?

Researchers have been looking into the possibility that Mona Lisa, or Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, very well might have been pregnant or had only just delivered a baby when she did her sitting for Leonardo Da Vinci's famous masterpiece. As Artie Johnson used to say, "Very interesting."

What gives them this idea? The clue lies in a revealing garment that became noticeable during the scans. It was a "fine, gauzy veil" around her shoulders, a garment commonly worn by pregnant women of the Italian Renaissance, according to French museum researcher Michel Menu.

It became harder to see these details as the painting aged, and the dark varnish on the painting made if difficult to tell what color Mona Lisa's dress was-it has been called everything from black to brown to green. But the piece of fabric around her shoulders was often construed to be a shawl, until now. The infared reflectography images show this veil, called a guarnello as being transparent. And it looks strikingly similar to the gauzy garment in Sandra Botticelli's "Portrait of a Lady," a painting of a woman who is indeed pregnant, and has her hand held over her stomach.

"What is amazing and paradoxical about that painting is that people think it's been analyzed but it's exactly the opposite," Rioux added. "This is the most inaccessible painting in the world. Why? Because it's 99.9 percent of the time in the Louvre for the public to view. The last time it was up for examination was 1952." (Associated Press)

The painting has endured various high-grade scans taken over 3 sessions in October of 2004, sometimes overnight, and during days when the Louvre was closed to the public. Researchers seem to have a hypothesis about the reason for the famous painting, feeling that Giocondo wanted the painting made to celebrate the arrival of his second son.

The smile of this woman has inspired songs, most famously, by Nat King Cole, who begs the question in the lyrics: was she smiling to tempt a lover, or hide a broken heart? Will we ever uncover the mystery hidden behind that smile?