There's only one Mona Lisa! Why a 10-year study got it all wrong

After a decade of research, a scientist claims to have found the portrait of another woman under Leonardo’s greatest work. Here’s why he’s so mistaken

Who is the Mona Lisa, really? There are two answers – and French scientist Pascal Cotte has got both of them wrong.

Cotte has told a BBC documentary about his 10-year study of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting using the Layer Amplification Method (LAM). When you look down through the layers of Leonardo’s painting, you see the fossils of his changing conception of the Mona Lisa. The first image he set down, Cotte says, was far less harmonious than the woman we see today – and she did not smile.

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