The Null Device

Mona Lisa's smile

Why is the Mona Lisa's smile so famously enigmatic? Because it disappears when looked at directly, showing up in full only in peripheral vision.

"The elusive quality of the Mona Lisa's smile can be explained by the fact that her smile is almost entirely in low spatial frequencies, and so is seen best by your peripheral vision," Prof Livingstone said.

There are no comments yet on "Mona Lisa's smile"

Want to say something? Do so here.

Post pseudonymously

Display name:
URL:(optional)

Post using your Facebook ID

To prove that you are not a bot, please enter the text in the image on the right in the field below it.

Your Comment:

Please keep comments on topic and to the point. Inappropriate comments may be deleted.

Note that markup is stripped from comments; URLs will be automatically converted into links.