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Scientists Think They’ve Discovered Why the Mona Lisa Has No Eyebrows

A new medical paper points to several unusual facial features in the famous portrait, but art historians have offered very different explanations.

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Being the most famous face in the world comes with some downsides, like having strangers comment on your eyebrows for 500 years.

The latest person to weigh in is Italian dermatologist Luigi Laino, who believes the woman in Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa had alopecia areata universalis, an autoimmune condition that can cause hair loss across the entire body. In a published paper, Laino pointed to four details: missing eyebrows, absent eyelashes, an abrupt hairline, and smooth skin without scarring. He argues that the combination points to alopecia more convincingly than the other explanations doctors have proposed over the years.

Laino also looked into the life of Lisa Gherardini, the woman believed to have posed for the painting. She married as a teenager, had six children, and........

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