Why are the cracks in the Mona Lisa's painted hands finer than those in other areas?

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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.

Small cracks in the paint, known as craquelure, are present throughout the Mona Lisa. The cracks on the subject's hands are finer than those in other areas because they were created using thinner layers of oil glazes, which correspond to Leonardo da Vinci’s late period of work on the painting.12