Superhuman trait Leonardo da Vinci and baseball great shared that may be the secret to Mona Lisa’s smile
- Leonardo da Vinci has been said to have a ‘quick eye’ – he could see dragonfly wings in motion. A researcher set out to gauge his ability to see in freeze-frame
- Da Vinci being able to capture a fleeting moment gives his paintings their air of reality and explains the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile, David Thaler theorises
Scientists believe Leonardo da Vinci’s superfast eye may have helped him catch the enigmatic magic of Mona Lisa’s smile.
This superhuman trait, which top tennis and baseball players may also share, allowed the Renaissance master to capture accurately minute, fleeting expressions and even birds and dragonflies in flight. Art historians have long talked of Leonardo’s “quick eye”, but David Thaler of Switzerland’s University of Basel has tried to gauge it in a new study, alongside another paper showing how he gave his drawings and paintings uncanny emotional depth.
The artist, who lived from 1452 to 1519, sketched how, when a dragonfly’s front wings are raised, the hind ones are lowered, something that was a blur to Thaler and to his colleagues when they tried to observe the difference themselves.
Thaler says that this gift to see what few humans can may be the secret of Leonardo’s most famous painting.