The title is enough. I'm sure you've already guessed what this article is about. Yes, my article this month is about my lady, Mona Lisa. "La Gioconda," as she's called in her native Italy. And, in Italy, her name means playful, jolly, cheerful, and merry. In an offbeat report during yesterday's noon news, I heard the conclusions drawn by an assemblage of dentists studying the lady's smile:

"No doubt about it. That is exactly how she would look if she just had a tooth pulled."

I don't think they were so much serious about studying her. They did little to reach those findings -- as little as was done to carbon-date the Shroud of Turin. Are they serious? And, how serious were the gynecologists and obstetricians when they decided in turn that she just learned she was pregnant, or just given birth?

The painting, declared the most-admired in history, is captivating to say the least. If standing in front of the portrait or a reproduction of it or holding a postcard bearing its image, can be said to be admiring it and be captivated by it, well, then, yes, it has probably been more gazed-upon than any other. I suggest the first persons to see the painting were some who knew the Florentine woman. One of them may have said:

"What's she got to smile about?"

"It's a mystery to me," another might have said, raising her nose in the air.

"She's really an enigma. I see the little peasant is smart enough to keep her mouth shut and just smile coyly," she snickers, peering more closely at the portrait.

Her smile, which has stood alone for centuries, remains still, mocking, aloof and holds our attention. It's at once quietly sad and at the same time frivolous. Could our La Gioconda have read the essay, "On the perfect beauty of a woman," by Firenzuola, a writer of her time, describing as a sign of elegance a slight opening of the lips at the corner of the mouth? It appears Mona Lisa mastered that lovely feminine attribute and Leonardo captured it. But what he captured more than anything else was our imagination.

His portrait of a woman became the prototype of portraits during the Renaissance. The Italians called the technique sfumato -- which translates as nuance. I've heard da Vinci referred to as a master of chiaroscuro, and I see the magnificent blending of light and shadow in this painting as well as in his other works. There is a mystery hidden in this painting, all right, but I find it in the artist, not the subject.

Other artists of the time tried to put movement into their works to make them less rigid. Botticelli brush-stroked every hair in m'lady's coiffure, and painted the folds in her garments until they seemed to move. Leonardo da Vinci merely left them indefinite, allowing them to fade into the shadows.

She draws us into her mystery making us wonder, as we gaze at her mesmerized, "What is she hiding behind her?" I almost want to peer more closely and ask, "Why are her fingertips hidden, not just folded under?"

And I am not alone in pondering this. I discovered the work of Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs, who suggests the Mona Lisa is a painting of the artist himself. To prove her theory, she analyzed the facial structure of the Mona Lisa and then flipped over the self-portrait of the artist, merging the two portraits together. They aligned perfectly. Ms. Schwartz invites us to draw our own conclusions, but I conclude nothing from the experiment. Others suggest it is a portrait of his mother, Catrina, who might have the same facial structure and wouldn't have to sign in as a model.

Admittedly, I'm not a student of the Renaissance. Except for Gainsborough's 18th Century "Blue Boy" and our Mona here, I can't match artists with paintings. But a portrait of this caliber, well known in art circles, advertisements, the greeting card and cartoon industry, is too to important a piece of art to let pass without giving it closer scrutiny, especially after hearing the report from those oral surgeons.

My findings are: Leonard da Vinci was in love with La Gioconda, the married woman posing in front of him -- so near and yet so far. She disappeared into the shadows of his work and literally out of his life. Why else would he have carried around that oil on wood portrait for so many years until eventually, he sold it in France? And, believe me, she knew he loved her. Anybody can see that. Just look at that smile. That's not an enigma; it's mischief.