Brighter faced and younger than the original which hangs in the Louvre in Paris, the lady in the portrait has long been standing against a black background.
Art historians thought it was just one of dozens of replicas produced in the centuries after Leonardo's death.
But as paint layers were stripped away during recent restoration work, a landscape much similar to the original backdrop in Da Vinci's masterpiece, emerged.
Intrigued, the curators turned to infrared reflectography, a technology which enables to see beneath the painted surface. They compared images obtained in 2004 from the original Mona Lisa with the Madrid copy.
"In the under-drawing you can see changes which are only apparent underneath the surface of the Louvre painting," said Gabriele Finaldi, deputy director of conservation at the Prado Museum.
The discovery suggests the picture was being produced at the same time as Leonardo was painting his masterpiece.
"The artist of this picture was making the same changes Leonardo was introducing into the original," Finaldi said.
Listed in the 1666 inventory of Madrid’s Alcazar Palace, the painting, which is close in size to the original Mona Lisa, enjoyed much attention in the past. Attributed to Leonardo himself, it was copied by various artists, such as Gaspare Sensi, known as Gaspar Sensi y Baldachi (1794-1880).
According to Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in Vinci, where Leonardo was born in 1452, the discovery is extremely important.
The curator of the exhibition Leonardo Da Vinci and His Idea of Beauty, which will open in March in Tokyo, Japan, with more than 20 Mona Lisa inspired works, Vezzosi believes that the author is a Spanish artist.
Read more at Discovery News
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