by Giulia Louise Steigerwalt
Lisa del Giocondo, also known as Lisa Gherardini, was a member of the Florentine Gherardini family back in 1479. Her husband commissioned her portrait to Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance and today many experts believe that that same painting is the Mona Lisa, also known as "La Gioconda".
Little is known about Lisa Gherardini's life. Born in Florence and married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life.
Fonte: L'italo-Americano
