Listen to the Mona Lisa

Even though she won't reveal the secret behind her enigmatic smile, people now have a chance to actually hear Mona Lisa's voice which, thanks to the wonders of modern science, has been brought to life.

Dr Matsumi Suzuki, the world's foremost acoustics expert who is credited with not only solving murders but also identifying Osama Bin Laden's voice with the help of voiceprinting technology, has utilized the state-of-the-art technology to recreate Mona Lisa's voice, some 500 years after her death, by using her physical features to deduce what she would have sounded like.

Using the length of her finger to estimate her height to be about 5ft 6in, Dr Suzuki and his team first figured out various physical features such as the structure of her skull, the size of her bones and the volume of her nose and throat.

After this, by using a computer programme with a database of more than 150,000 voices, the team matched her physical features to a voiceprint.

Using this pattern of frequencies, described as the measurable elements of a human voice, based on the shape of the speaker's mouth and throat, the computer programme was then able to create a synthesised voice for the Mona Lisa.

Dr Suzuki said that the technology had given him the know-how of how to create a voice that was extremely close to the real thing.

"Knowing her bone frame I can make her voice. We believe we were able to create voices that are very close to the real voices," the Daily Mail quoted him, as saying.

People can now here the Mona Lisa announce in Italian: "I'm Elizabeth, also known as Mona Lisa. I am a lady with a smile, filled with a profound riddle."

Dr Suzuki has also used this technology to recreate the voice of the Mona Lisa's creator Leonardo Da Vinci, who can be heard saying: "The Mona Lisa is my greatest masterpiece".

I don't read Japanese but here's Dr Suzuki's site.......