Leonardo da Vinci may have invented 3-D image with ‘Mona Lisa’

On the left side, A copy of the Mona Lisa in the Prado Museum is painted from a slightly different perspective than the original in the Louvre in the right side photo. Together, the paintings make a stereoscopic image — whether da Vinci knew that or not.

Leonardo da Vinci was an inventor and scientist as well as an artist, and he took a special interest in finding ways to realistically render three-dimensional forms on a flat canvas. And now, a pair of researchers say that in the early 1500s he might have created the world’s first 3-D image.

Leonardo da Vinci may have invented 3-D image with ‘Mona Lisa’

To re-create the positions of the artists in the two-artist scenario, Claus-Christian Carbon and Vera Hesslinger of the University of Bamberg in Germany calculated perspective differences by comparing landmarks such as the tip of the nose in the two versions. They also had 32 people visually estimate the artists’ positions relative to the subject while looking at each painting. The researchers mapped out the artist positions that would result in the slightly different view seen in the paintings, and then made a tiny reference version of that scene in the greatest use of Minifigures ever: This figure indicates that A re-creation of a two-painter scenario for the Louvre and Prado versions of the Mona Lisa has a second painter, possibly a student, standing to the left and ahead of da Vinci. The distance between the perspectives in delta position would have been 69 millimeters, similar to the distance between a person’s eyes and yielding nearly stereoscopic images.

The horizontal distance between the perspectives worked out to 69 millimeters, pretty close to the average distance between an Italian man’s eyes, or interocular distance, of 64 millimeters.

And this, it turns out, is exactly how 3-D images are made. Our brains perceive depth by combining the images from each of our eyes, which each see a scene from a slightly different perspective. (This is why covering one eye hampers depth perception.) So looking at two pictures that differ in perspective by the interocular difference can create a stereoscopic, or 3-D, image.

One way to see the 3-D effect is to look at two stereoscopic images side by side with the field of view of each eye crossed in front of you. You might remember the kids’ books that have two images that you hold right in front of your eyes and then slowly pull back while practicing a thousand-yard stare until, pop! The two images merge into one 3-D picture.

Leonardo da Vinci may have invented 3-D image with ‘Mona Lisa’

To see the two Mona Lisas in 3-D, the same principle would apply. The paintings would be viewed side-by-side with the viewer’s eyes converged in front of them (or with the eyes looking farther apart, a similar technique called parallel viewing).  The two images can also be tinted red and cyan and then viewed through old-school red-and-blue 3-D glasses to get the same effect. The researchers tinted electronic versions of the two paintings, and voila. Dig out some 3-D glasses for this one. The left side photo shows  The Prado Museum version of the Mona Lisa and the Louvre painting, the centered photo shows the subject from slightly different angles that can combine into a 3-D image in the right side photo.

Leonardo da Vinci may have invented 3-D image with ‘Mona Lisa’

DaVinci did write about monocular and binocular vision and studied aspects of optics including eye anatomy and light reflection, and he even experimented with colored light sources. But it’s not clear whether he put all the pieces together to understand how to create a stereoscopic image. The paintings don’t quite make a perfect stereo pair, the researchers say, but a good one for being 500-year-old paintings.

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