French art expert, Pascal Cotte has uncovered a host of secrets. He has analyzed Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa using a240 megapixel camera. According to him, the Mona Lisa had eyebrows.

Leonardo da Vinci built the painting up in layers, the last being a special glaze whose optical properties increased the illusion of a three-dimensional face. Above the glaze, Leonardo da Vinci painted details such as eyebrows, said Pascal Cotte.

He said Mona Lisa looked totally different 500 years ago, when it had a blue sky and the subject’s skin had not yellowed. The underlying layers of face, the smile and the glance also show it was wider than the end result appears.

Cotte’s work is explained in an exhibition, ‘The secrets of the Mona Lisa’, that opens at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Saturday.