In the last sixteen years of his life, Leonardo Da Vinci fussed and toiled and agonized over a single portrait; a portrait he would never sell. A curious portrait of a woman with an interesting smile on her face that would eventually become famous the world over. The portrait known as simply the Mona Lisa.  But it’s possible that none but Da Vinci himself could predict some of the more elusive reasons this painting would still be under such heavy scrutiny to this day.

Da Vinci was a very secretive man and used a form of writing known as mirror writing to keep his private notes private. Anyone else trying to read them would have, unbeknownst to them, needed to use a mirror to read them. And modern researchers have found that he used the mirror effect for more than just his notes.  He used it in his paintings too. And they’ve found hundreds of examples of this phenomenon in the Mona Lisa alone.

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