Five Centuries Of Speculation, Mona Lisa And A New Clue

  Lisa del Giocondo (Italian pronunciation:  née Gherardini June 15, 1479 – July 15, 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 during the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Born in Florence and married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was a mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary steady income life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was considerably her senior. In the centuries after Lisa's death, the Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting. In 2005, Lisa was definitively identified as the model for the Mona Lisa