The Louvre is known for its classic art, but this season, the globally renowned Paris museum is putting a very modern spin on one of its oldest and most loved attractions. 

This year's Leonardo da Vinci exhibition is the biggest and most expensive show in the museum's history with more than 150 objects and paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist having already attracted more than 300,000 visitors since October.

Read more: Louvre blockbuster: Honoring Leonardo da Vinci 500 years on

In between the 500-year-old artworks in the gallery, there sits a very hi-tech masterpiece – a virtual reality installation with a very familiar face. 

Here, visitors can sit face-to-face with a young woman from Florence, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, better know as Mona Lisa. Art enthusiasts get the opportunity to engage with the world's most famous muse through spectacular animations, getting a new insight into Da Vinci's smiling subject. 

Chinese company HTC came up with the idea for the virtual reality experience, where visitors can use their "Vive" headsets to learn more about the woman behind the brush strokes and her enigmatic frozen smile. The content was developed by a French design company, but it wasn't easy to bring the 500-year-old woman into the 21st century.

Dominique de Font-Reaulx, one of the Louvre's chief curators, was in charge of this ambitious project. "In the first proposals, Mona Lisa looked like a young lady of today. I said, 'well, a girl of that age, from a wealthy family, who already had five children, looked different from girls today.' So we had a discussion, but it worked out well," she said.

Da Vinci was not only a painter, but also a scientist, an architect, an engineer... In fact, he had so many talents that today he is often seen as the embodiment of the Renaissance man. So, hopefully the old master would be pleased with the hi-tech interpretation of his work. 

"Well, Leonardo invented the helicopter before the helicopter existed, thought about airplanes before planes existed, so I think today, he would be interested in virtual reality, of course," said De Font-Reaulx.

With Da Vinci's forward thinking, it's possible this highly advanced work of art would have caused him to crack his own special smile.

The Leonardo da Vinci exhibition runs to 24 February 2020.