Was Mona Lisa Happy?

The BBC reports that a computer program used at the University of Amsterdam has concluded that Mona Lisa, the subject of the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, was mostly happy.

Given the fact that many Art scholars seem to believe that Mona Lisa was actually da Vinci himself, I guess this tells us that da Vinci was, at least as he posed before a mirror for the painting, "mostly happy."

The BBC explained the computer program on which the assessment is based:

The program, developed with researchers at the University of Illinois, draws on a database of young female faces to derive an average "neutral" expression.

The software uses this average expression as the standard for comparisons.

Pardon me if I'm a little skeptical. The reading of body language is, I think, more art than science and susceptible to being wrong.

Besides, even acknowledging Mona Lisa's long-alleged enigmatic quality, she is smiling. That's a big hint that she was happy at the time the artist captured "her" face on the canvas.

The word happy, as I've talked about before, is related to our word happen. Happiness describes that fleeting emotion resulting from things like compliments, jokes, or encouraging news. Happiness is dependent on circumstances.

Joy, by contrast, is something that we possess irrespective of circumstances. It's down-in-the-soul serenity rooted, I believe, in a relationship with the eternal and ever-present and loving God we know through Jesus Christ.