Mona Lisa – the subject of Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece – was likely overweight according to experts who say obesity in art was a sign of beauty and fertility
Mona Lisa was overweight and unhealthy according to a leading obesity doctor.
Medics suspect the subject of the world’s most famous painting had high cholesterol or an underactive thyroid. The smiling woman in Leonardo Da Vinci’s 16th Century masterpiece has sparked a debate about why legendary artists depicted female models with bellies and curves.
Dr Michael Yafi, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of Texas Houston, told the European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul that obese women were considered beautiful in the past.
Dr Yafi, presenting his research paper on obesity in art, said: “Obesity has an interesting history. Although currently it might be looked at in a negative way, in the past it was not.
“Strong men, leaders, royal families, religious people, high people in the society were portrayed with high BMI [body mass index]. Beautiful women and models were also portrayed with high BMI. Women with obesity used to be models but current models are almost anorexic, which is not good for you either.”
The Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world and was insured for nearly £54million in 1962 – a Guinness World Record and equal to £1billion in today’s money.
It was completed by Da Vinci in the early 1500s and now hangs in the Louvre museum in Paris. It is believed to be of an Italian woman named Lisa Gherardini.
Dr Yafi said: “Lisa is shown with excessive body fat. There are many theories about her and the most recent paper was basically that she had a problem with her BMI and severe hypothyroidism.
“We don’t know because we cannot go back and make a diagnosis, we are just analysing her features. A simpler explanation is that she had put on weight in pregnancy. After all, she’d had four children by this time. This is probably the most famous painting in art history and there are many papers about finding a medical diagnosis, I think it’s fun.”
An underactive thyroid, known as hypothyroidism, is a common condition where your thyroid gland in your neck doesn’t produce enough essential hormones. It is much more common in women and can lead to weight gain, fatigue, feeling cold, constipation and mild depression.
Dr Yafi said male musical composers Bach and Handel were also depicted as fat and probably had type 2 diabetes as they lost their vision. Angels and child-like cherubs were also usually portrayed as overweight with folds of skin, showing it was considered virtuous.
Dr Yafi added that future paintings will probably show women as unusually thin as weight loss jabs become widespread. The appetite-suppressing injections such as Mounjaro and Wegovy mimic the hormone GLP-1 to make people feel full quicker and have become a global phenomenon.
Dr Yafi said women in paintings could increasingly have gaunt “GLP-1 face”. This is defined as the rapid loss of fat from the cheeks, temples and under the eyes which can make wrinkles appear more prominent, skin look loose and eyes seem sunken.
Dr Yafi added: “I think that as more people use these drugs, ‘GLP-1 face’ will be depicted in art. The face can develop an aged or tired look due to rapid fat loss in the cheeks, temples, and under-eye areas. I am sure that if Picasso had been alive today, he would have painted it.”
One of the earliest examples of obesity being portrayed as a symbol of power is the Venus of Willendorf, a stone figurine discovered in Austria that is thought to be 24,000 to 32,000 years old. It shows a woman with excess body fat and hips, breasts and other reproductive features have been exaggerated in size, Dr Yafi said.
Dr Yafi said: “We know from research from Turkey that 29 of the 36 Ottoman emperors who lived between 1258 and 1926 were depicted as having abdominal obesity or reported to have obesity.”
