True colours of Mona Lisa on display at museum

The true colours of the Mona Lisa are going on display for the first time in the UK in Manchester, after the world's most powerful camera captured the painting in its original form.

Parisian engineer Pascal Cotte invented a 240-megapixel camera to see beneath the layers of the Leonardo Da Vinci painting which dates back to the early 16th century.

He discovered traces of an eyebrow, a wider smile and vastly different colours, all of which have vanished over time, when he scanned the portrait two years ago.

The results can be seen in this country for the first time, at the Museum of Science and Industry (Mosi) in Manchester. Mr Cotte said: "Today the sky is green but we can see it was originally blue.

"Today there are no eyebrows or eyelashes but we can see he originally painted them.

"When we look at the mysterious smile, the camera shows how he originally painted it wider, but he changed his mind and reduced the dimensions of the mouth."

Mr Cotte recently hit the headlines after discovering Da Vinci was the artist behind a pencil drawing known as La Bella Principessa, an image of which is also part of the exhibition.

He spent 3,000 hours examining the Mona Lisa, a portrait of a Florentine merchant's wife which permanently resides in The Louvre in Paris.

A life-size submarine, scuba diving suit and a military tank based on Da Vinci's visionary designs can also be seen at the museum.

Italian artisans translated his unusual shorthand, written from right to left, to bring the drawings to life. Da Vinci - The Genius opens today at Mosi.