8 Hidden Secrets In The Mona Lisa

2. A Hidden Code

We repeat: much as it pains us to admit it, we think Dan Brown might have been onto something. Members of Italy's National Committee for Cultural Heritage decided to take the Da Vinci Code semi-seriously for more than five seconds and it turned out there may actually have been some hidden codes concealed with the Mona Lisa, placed there centuries ago by Leonardo da Vinci because he apparently had the patience of a saint and the sort of aptitude for hiding things as The Saint, the literary character otherwise known as Simon Templar, played by Roger Moore on TV and Val Kilmer on the big screen, who was a super spy of some note.

You're learning a lot today, huh? It turns out that Pascal Cotte totally missed out on a big mystery tucked away in the painting when he did his own high definition magnifications of the painting, since it wasn't just eyebrows that were hidden in there - there are also letters and numbers which can be seen very faintly in Mona Lisa's eyes, if you squint hard enough.

No pun intended. "To the naked eye the symbols are not visible but with a magnifying glass they can clearly be seen," said Silvano Vinceti, president of the Committee, and that sounds like a pretty prestigious position so we're inclined to take the man at his word. The right eye features the letters "LV", which more than likely stands for Leonardo da Vinci (pretty low key signature right there) and the symbols in the left eye are a little harder to make out, but they appear to be the letters CE or the letter B.

Meanwhile in the arch of the bridge in the background the number 72 can be seen. Or it might be an L and the number 2. Whatever, we don't know what all these letters and numbers mean, but they're definitely there, and they're definitely mysterious. And were hidden for a good five hundred years, which is pretty cool.