Boshonto Family

HER CRYPTIC HALF-SMILE has baffled art lovers for nearly five centuries. The sophisticated programme examines features to determine a person's mood.Some claim she is not smiling at all or that she's hiding a secret or the painting is a self-portrait. But now a computer has concluded that Mona Lisa really was happy. Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait was analysed by a computer using 'emotion recognition' software.

Its conclusion? She was 83 per cent happy, nine per cent disgusted, six per cent fearful and two per cent angry. The sophisticated programme examines features such as the curvature of the lips and wrinkles around the eyes to determine a person's mood. The programme draws on a database of young female faces to derive an average 'neutral' expression. A person's expression is then compared with the neutral template to determine their mood.

With a reading of 83 per cent the Mona Lisa was definitely happy, researchers at the University of Amsterdam told New Scientist. According to the journal, this kind of software which is capable of recognising emotions just by looking at photographs could lead to PCs that adjust their response depending on the user's mood. The program was developed with researchers from the University of Illinois.

The Mona Lisa, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, was painted between 1503 and 1506. It was thought to be named after the sitter, most likely the Florentine wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

In 2000, Harvard scientist Margaret Livingstone claimed the smile that appears to flicker across her face is an optical illusion caused by light, shadow and her prominent cheekbones. At the time, she said: 'Leonardo was a genius. It's taken us 500 years to figure it out.'

In 1995 Italian scientists used computer modelling techniques to work out that the background landscape in the Da Vinci painting showed the hills of Tuscany.