Why does the Mona Lisa have no eyebrows?

It was the fashion at the time for women to pluck their eyebrows and hairline to give the appearance of a very high forehead.

Found This…

There is a theory that she had some condition, I forget the name of it though, that causes one to not have eyebrows and to have very soft teeth. They think that is the reason she’s smiling with her mouth closed because her teeth might have been really bad.

She got drunk the night before with some guy friends, she also had a penis of her forehead in the first draft.

Maybe she got drunk and caught a taxi cab.

When I was at Uni it was common for taxi drivers to shave off one or both the eyebrows of any woman who passed out in the cab. They would be pretty pissed off because with a woman, unlike a guy, they couldn’t kick them out, had to either wait until they sobered up or take them back to the cab base – either way losing time and money. You would often see a girl turn up for class minus one or more eyebrows. You always knew what had happened.

She had thyroid problems or got over-zealous with the tweezers.

It is believed that they just faded away with time. Since then restorations have not included repainting them. There is digital evidence she once had them. As to other parts of her body, I hear she preferred to be clean shaven. Bay-bee!

Is that hear-say AC, or do you have carnal knowledge? ;P

Not at all. I’ve seen the lesser known second half of the painting. She posed for Leonardo while seated on the toilet, you know.

Or maybe some sort of smoking accident…

Over waxing does it everytime.

Maybe Leonardo Da Vinci was into the whole alopecia thing when it came to the subjects he was interested in painting.

Or maybe he just couldn’t paint eyebrows?

Wait…isn’t she Da Vinci?

Mona Lisa Da Vinci?

well i heard that Da Vinci actually painted himself. aka. Mona Lisa

I will try to dig around for a source, but I remember hearing that they were once there. They were the last bit he painted, and when someone in the past was working on restoring the painting, they accidentally removed the eyebrow layer. I have terrible source amnesia, though. I have no idea where I heard that. I’ll see what I can find.

Actually, the link above from @bythebay says pretty much what all the articles I’ve found say.

@loser: I think so too :) Unlike many artists, da Vinci could paint impressive, lifelike hands but when it came to eyebrows, well… Another theory I’ve heard is that, along with the vogue for ‘enhanced foreheads’ (@hungryhungryhortence) to denote ‘highbrow’ intelligence and being noble/‘wellbred’, the shaving of eyebrows and plucking or trimming of eyelashes served a practical purpose: it ensured that nits (lice) couldn’t – literally – hang around your eyes. (As for the shaving of the ‘pits and bits’, @AstroChuck, one of my art teacher’s expressed strong opinions on that matter, but at that point in the Iesson I thought it best to leave him and the life model to continue their debate privately.)