Symbolism, Why does Mona not have eyebrows?

Why does the famous picture of Mona Lisa not have any eyebrows? I've been puzzled by this because I was trying to find some type of symbolism behind it because everyone says Leonardo always put symbolism in his pictures. Does anyone know why Mona would lack eyebrows for a purpose?

The only explanation I can recall for the missing eyebrows was that it was the fashion at the time to shave your eyebrows. So she never had them when she sat for the painting.

Anybody else?



Bleys

I just did a few quick yahoo searches on this, and cannot find anything on the eyebrows.

Da Vinci didn't detail much around the eyebrows, or the mouth, so as to create the appearance that the painting was more "alive", for lack of a better word.

The Mystery of the Mona Lisa. That website gives some broad strokes regarding the painting's mystery and symbolism, and is quite interesting.

Actually when I first saw the painting I did notice anything wrong with Mona. Perhaps Da Vinci was trying to show that you could not tell that anything is wrong IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO COMPARE IT TO.

She's got eyebrows. They're thin and plucked in the fashion that was popular in that day. And the painting is varnished and hasn't been cleaned recently so some of the detail is harder to see (like the shapes in the background.)

Click on the portraits of the women in these galleries (all of which look "eyebrowless" from a distance) and you'll see.

gallery.euroweb.hu...

Here's another one:
www.virtualmuseum.ca...

[edit on 21-4-2005 by Byrd]

I still do not see the eyebrows, even when I enlarge it.

upload.wikimedia.org...

Perhaps the picture is so old that has faded more in the eyebrow area.

Funny I never notice before that the Mona had not eyebrows. I guess I got with Byrd explanation.

Perhaps her coloring was very pale originally.

She was not a very attractive women but more like asexual looking.

Does anybody think it was DaVinci himself dress as a women?

Maybe he just didn't do eyebrows well?

Maybe she got too close to the fire one night and they burned away?