The Mona Lisa in Japanese

For five hundred years, Leonardo Da Vinci's famed Mona Lisa has enchanted art experts and layman alike. But this year a £200m project will open up its mysteries to new audiences as the priceless Italian artwork is translated into French, German and Japanese.

"What most people don't realise is that the Mona Lisa is painted in quite an obscure dialect," said exhibition curator Monique La Peinture. "So this project is designed to make the painting far more accessible to the vast numbers of our visitors who are not sixteenth century Italians."

The scheme is the culmination of six years' work, during which time the team have developed revolutionary new techniques in the fields of art-cryptology and language paint. And now, following the success of this initiative, plans are being laid for a colour edition of Don Quixote and a 3D version of Handel's Water Music.