Lisa del Giocondo

Lisa del Giocondo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈliːza del dʒoˈkondo]; born Lisa Camilla di Antonmaria Gherardini [ɡerarˈdiːni]; June 15, 1479 – July 14, 1542) was an Italian noblewoman and member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany. Her name was given to the Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the Italian Renaissance.

Little is known about Lisa's life. Lisa was born in Florence. She married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official; she was a mother to six children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was considerably her senior.

In the centuries after Lisa's life, the Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting. In 2005, Lisa was identified as a subject for a da Vinci portrait around 1503, strongly reinforcing the traditional view of her as the model for Mona Lisa.

Lisa's Florentine family was old and aristocratic, but over time had lost their influence. They were well off but not wealthy, and lived on a farm income in a city where there were great disparities in wealth among inhabitants. Antonmaria di Noldo Gherardini, Lisa's father, came from a family who had lived on properties near San Donato in Poggio and only recently moved to the city. Gherardini at one time owned or rented six farms in Chianti that produced wheat, wine, and olive oil and where livestock was raised.

In 1465, Gherardini married Lisa di Giovanni Filippo de' Carducci, and in 1473 remarried to Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai; both of them died in childbirth. Lisa's mother was Lucrezia del Caccia, daughter of Piera Spinelli, and Gherardini's wife by his third marriage in 1476. Lisa was born in Florence on June 15, 1479, on Via Maggio, although for many years it was thought she was born on Villa Vignamaggio just outside Greve, one of the family's rural properties. She was named for Lisa, a wife of her paternal grandfather. The eldest of seven children, Lisa had three sisters, one of whom was named Ginevra, and three brothers, Giovangualberto, Francesco, and Noldo.

The family lived in Florence, originally near Santa Trinita and later in rented space near Santo Spirito, likely because they were unable to afford repairs when their first house was damaged. Lisa's family moved to what today is called Via dei Pepi, and then near Santa Croce, where they lived near Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo's father. They also owned a small country home in San Donato in the village of Poggio about 32 kilometres (20 mi) south of the city. Noldo, Gherardini's father and Lisa's grandfather, had bequeathed a farm in Chianti to the Santa Maria Nuova hospital. Gherardini secured a lease for another of the hospital's farms; the family spent summers there at the house named Ca' di Pesa, so that Gherardini could oversee the wheat harvest.

On March 5, 1495, 15-year-old Lisa married 29-year-old Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo, an ambitious cloth and silk merchant, becoming his second wife. Her age at marriage was around the norm for Florentine women of the time, who often married men ten or more years their senior. Because her father had not participated in the custom of saving cash at a daughter's birth that compounded interest for dowries, Lisa's dowry was land: her father's most valuable property in Chianti, the San Silvestro farm near her family's country home, which lies between Castellina and San Donato in Poggio, near two farms later owned by Michelangelo. The farm was valued at 400 florins, and its contents at 170 florins. The modest dowry may be a sign that the Gherardini family was not wealthy at the time. Art historian Frank Zöllner says the dowry's small size lends reason to think Francesco may have had true affection for Lisa.

Neither poor nor among the most well-to-do in Florence, the couple lived a comfortable middle-class life. Historian Donald Sassoon says they were upwardly mobile and were among the city's nouveaux riches. Lisa's marriage may have increased her social status because her husband's family may have been richer than her own. Francesco is thought to have benefited because Gherardini is an "old name". They lived in shared accommodation until March 5, 1503, when Francesco was able to buy a house next door to his family's old home in the Via della Stufa. Leonardo is thought to have begun painting Lisa's portrait the same year. Lisa lived in the "Casa grande" on Via della Stufa for nearly fifty years.