How does sfumato make the Mona Lisa's face look realistic?

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Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, oil painting showing a woman with a slight smile and folded hands, seated before a distant, hazy landscape. — Mona Lisa *Mona Lisa*, oil on wood panel by Leonardo da Vinci, 1503–19; in the Louvre, Paris.

Sfumato is a painting technique that creates a highly realistic appearance by using fine shading to produce soft, imperceptible transitions between colors and tones.1

In the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci utilized this method to define facial features without relying on harsh lines or borders. By blending one tone into another, the technique allows the edges of the subject's face to dissolve into the surrounding shadows, much like smoke. This subtle gradation from light to dark areas eliminates artificial outlines, resulting in a lifelike, illusionistic quality that makes the features appear to exist naturally within the surrounding atmosphere.12