People are very interested in age-old questions, such as who was here first — the chicken or the egg? What color is a zebra? How certain animals would dress? Can we reach to China if we dig a hole in the ground? Oh, but the list is so long that it would take us pages only to list them. However, there is a question that has “tormented” us not since the beginning of time, but for about five centuries: What’s the secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile?

In a campaign by advertising agency Forsman & Bodenfors, AMF, Sweden’s biggest pension fund for occupational pension, tries to answer it. According to them, Leonardo’s “favorite model’s” mysterious smile is related to the fact that da Vinci, her “employer,” assured her that she will enjoy a nice pension from her work.

Sure, money is important but do you know what’s more important than this? Family! And Mona Lisa was aware of this (we assume that this is the reason behind her smile). She appreciated her master but she put her daughter’s well-being above all. She wanted her kid to inherit everything she had (especially that mysterious smile). And the genetic information does not lie: Like, look at the resemblance between the two of them!

While her mother rules the corridors of the Louvre, the daughter is on the other side of the world, in a photography studio for newborns, sitting next to other infants that represent celebrities from different eras.

The Girl with a Pearl Earring and Frida Kahlo are also there, represented at the same age as the mini Mona Lisa. All these personalities appear in the form of photographs, created as part of a campaign to promote Os Bebês da Lhais, a boutique photography studio specializing in maternity, newborn, and children portraiture. The 18-day-old baby girl, daughter of Lucas de Ouro, the Creative Director of Tuppi Criatividade, the agency behind the project, is the model who, although just a newborn, managed to express the features of these women from the Baroque, Renaissance, and Surrealism periods.

Based on the fact that the newborn market had a huge increment in the last years and that most of the results are pretty similar to each other, the client decided to advertise its services with creative storytelling. Inspired by some of the world’s most famous paintings, the artists gave birth to a series of images that simply capture the eye of the viewers.

The nice part is that the campaign doesn’t let you wonder what the children of these women would have looked like. It really shows you that they would have been identical to them, inheriting some of their famous traits: In the case of Mona Lisa — the smile, in Vermeer’s painting — we witness the famous earring, and Frida Kahlo’s tiny copy reflects the artist’s signature, the unibrow.

“Fatherhood brought me closer to the baby universe and I discovered that there was room for more creativity in newborn photoshoots. I was very happy to see the repercussions of the campaign and the visibility that the client gained around the world and I was also pleased to see my baby daughter as a model,” said Lucas de Ouro about the project that made people share it on social media.

Credits:

Client: Os Bebês da Lhais

Agency: Tuppi Criatividade

ACD / Art Direction / Post Production: Lucas de Ouro

Copywriter: Felipe Queiroz

Art Direction: Daniel Nunes

Creative Consultant: Daniel da Hora