Mona Lisa Smile is 83% Happy

The smile of the Mona Lisa may seem enigmatic because she is, in fact, a blend of many different emotions. A computer analysis of the Renaissance masterpiece has found that she is 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful and 2 per cent angry.

Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous portrait has been scrutinised by a software programme or algorithm designed to tease apart the different emotions behind a facial expression. The result is that the smile of the Mona Lisa is broken down into its constituent parts, said Nicu Sebe of the University of Amsterdam.

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According to New Scientist magazine: "His algorithm examines facial features such as curvature of the lips and crinkles around the eyes, then scores each face with respect to six basic emotions." Dr Sebe said he drew on a database of young female faces to derive an average or "neutral" expression which he used to compare the work against.

Although the overwhelming emotion was one of happiness, the computer found that the second most important was disgust, which could explain why the Mona Lisa may seem to some people to be expressing a sense of irony, said Dr Sebe. "But no one really knows for sure why she looks so enigmatic. We don't know the context of why she was smiling, so it will remain ambiguous," he said.