ELI5: Why Doesn't the Mona Lisa Have Eyebrows?

The Mona Lisa actually had eyebrows when she was first painted, but they disappeared over hundreds of years because of gentle cleaning and the way the artist made the painting.

When the famous artist Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, he used very thin, see-through layers of paint to make her face look soft and real. Because the brushstrokes for her eyebrows and eyelashes were tiny and delicate, they were not stuck as deeply into the wood as the rest of the painting.

Here is why we cannot see them in everyday life today:

• Too much cleaning: Think about your favorite cartoon T-shirt. If you wash it over and over again for years, the picture slowly fades away. Over five hundred years, art doctors washed and wiped the Mona Lisa to remove dirt and dust, and those delicate eyebrow hairs were accidentally wiped away with the grime.
• Fading over time: Just like an old drawing left in the sun, paint chemicals can dry out, crack, and become invisible after hundreds of years.
• Old-fashioned trends: In Leonardo's time, it was also very fashionable for rich women to pluck or shave off their eyebrows completely, like how people follow different beauty and hairstyle trends today. While Leonardo did paint faint hairs, he kept them very light to match the style of the era.