A French scientist has revealed what he says is Leonardo da Vinci’s original version of the world’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.

Using a new kind of light technology, scientist Pascal Cotte said he spent ten years interpreting the layers of the 16th-century oil painting.

The Louvre, Mona Lisa’s home since 1797, allowed Mr Cotte access to the painting in 2004, but has declined to comment on his method or findings.

• Mona Lisa’s bones allegedly found
• World’s largest cloning factory to open
• Ultimate travel bucket list

Mr Cotte’s reconstructed image of the da Vinci’s ‘original’ portrait shows the subject facing to the side, rather than staring straight at the viewer and missing the smirk credited with making her the world’s most famous and intriguing portrait.

Mr Cotte’s ‘finding’, left, and the final version, right. Photo: BBC

More significantly, Mr Cotte claims she is a completely different woman.

“We can now analyze exactly what is happening inside the layers of the paint and we can peel, like an onion, all the layers of the painting. We can reconstruct all the chronology of the creation of the painting,” Cotte told the BBC of the alleged discovery.

Art historians were skeptical about Mr Cotte’s claims, especially that the hidden portrait depicts a totally different woman to Lisa del Giocondo.

“The idea that there is that picture as it were hiding underneath the surface is untenable,” Mona Lisa expert Martin Kemp told the BBC.

“I do not think there are these discrete stages which represent different portraits. I see it as more or less a continuous process of evolution. I am absolutely convinced that the Mona Lisa is Lisa,” he said.

Mr Cotte, who co-founded the Paris-based company Lumiere Technology, will present his findings in the upcoming BBC documentary, The Secrets of the Mona Lisa.