THE HUSHED galleries of the international art world will be filled with sound and fury tomorrow when the world's best-loved painting, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, is rehung after extensive cleaning minus its most famous attribute - the enigmatic half-smile on the face of its sitter, which has perplexed and enchanted generations of admirers.
The changed Mona Lisa returns to the Salle d'Etat tomorrow after six months in the care of restoration experts. The Independent on Sunday was allowed an exclusive preview of the painting after last week's re-port on the similarly controversial restoration of Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
As our photographs reveal, the Mona Lisa no longer looks amused, but rather thoughtful and preoccu-pied. There is even, perhaps, the trace of a scowl. Otherwise the painting is substantially unchanged, though the colours have been brightened by removing the many layers of varnish applied to the canvas over the centuries.
Restoration of the painting has been a closely guarded secret for several months. Only a handful of the museum's most senior staff were kept informed of its progress, though the smile was erased shortly before Christmas.
Two disgruntled members of staff are known to have already resigned in protest. ''Elle ne sourie plus, nous non plus,'' they said yesterday (''She is not smiling; neither are we'').
The restoration work was apparently supervised by the Louvre's most expert conservators. A spokesman for the museum yesterday said: ''Cleaning revealed considerable overpainting in the area around the sitter's mouth which was deemed to have been added to the picture at least 100 years after it left Leonardo da Vinci's studio.'' He added that the overpainting was removed ''after extensive consultation with the world's leading authorities on Leonardo''.
But several such experts were unaware yesterday of the restoration being...
