Lisa is the most famous non-famous person in the world. As Mona Lisa, she is the best-known face in the history of images of women. As Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, she would not warrant a glance in the history of Italy. Indeed, before 2007, we did not even know when she died and where she was buried.
Born in 1479, Lisa came from a “good family”, though they had lost much of their supreme status after 1300. Lisa’s branch of the Gherardini was not prosperous. She was born in Florence on June 15, in a house on the corner of the via Maggio and chiasso Guazzacoglie, today the via Sguazza, then a damp and unpropitious alley. In 1494, her family moved to the Santa Croce district, in a house located on the corner of the via dei Pepi and via Ghibellina, almost opposite the house of the notary Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo’s father.
The following year, Lisa became the second wife of Francesco del Giocondo, a rich silk merchant and canny operator who undertook diverse trading deals. It’s a familiar story: new money marries into old gentry. Lisa was his second wife and moved into his palace in via della Stufa, a few steps from the convent of Sant’Orsola, in a maze of alleys, very animated by day and by night. The building stood at the end of the street and its upper windows overlooked the garden of the Palazzo Taddei, where Raphael was lodging in 1504-08. Francesco also owned a country villa at Montughi on a hill overlooking Florence.
Lisa and Francesco had six children, two of whom died shortly after birth. The sons followed in their father’s footsteps and entered the company. A branch had been opened in Lyon. Two daughters became nuns: Camilla, who died at 18, and Marietta, who took her vows in 1522 as “suor Ludovica” in the nearby convent of Sant’Orsola.
Sant’Orsola was a prestigious institution, which accepted well-born girls accompanied by substantial sums of money. Lisa attended and supported the nuns with alms or by buying their pharmacy products, as we read in the convent archives. On August 11, 1514, she donated “3 lire”; on August 29, 1514, she bought “distillato d’acqua di chiocciole” (snail water distillate), probably a cosmetic or antiseptic fluid; on July 14, 1519, she paid the handsome sum of 18 gold florins “pel vitto della Marietta sua figliuola” (for Marietta’s food). At other times, the trade went in the other direction, as in September 1523 when she sold to the convent “libbre di chacio” (the family farm cheese). Each time, she was recorded as “Mona Lisa del Giocondo”.
In 1537, a year before his death, Francesco de Giocondo made his will. Unsurprisingly, he was to be buried in the family vault in SS. Annunziata. Lisa is referred to as a “mulier ingenua’—an odd term, maybe meaning ‘sincere” or “genuine”. She was not a substantial beneficiary. She was then resident in the convent of Sant’Orsola, where she died on July 15, 1542. Her funeral was conducted in a well-attended service at San Lorenzo and she was buried in Sant’Orsola, rather than in the family vault. This is surprising. There is enough to suggest a rift between husband and wife in the later years of their lives. In any event, the discovery of her presence and burial in the convent have granted impetus to the large current project to refurbish Sant’Orsola.
What of Francesco, Lisa and Leonardo? There is no potential shortage of likely contacts. Most notably, Ser Piero was the notary to SS. Annunziata, the focus of Francesco’s patronage, where Leonardo was working after his return to Florence in 1500. In 1497, Ser Piero acted as an arbitrator between the Servite friars and Francesco and Antonio del Giocondo, and was active in other legal matters for the Giocondo family and the monastery. And they lived close to Ser Piero. It is not hard to imagine that Francesco promoted the idea to Ser Piero that his son might accomplish the modest business of portraying his wife on a small panel, while the painter was engaged on bigger projects.
The ultra-famous painting in the Louvre could thus be said to be the result of unintended consequences.
For further reading: Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti, Mona Lisa. The People and the Painting, Oxford 2017
Martin John Kemp is a British art historian and exhibition curator who is one of the world’s leading authorities on the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci. Giuseppe Pallanti is a teacher from Florence who has spent 25 years researching the city’s archives and discovered the first clear evidence that Leonardo’s family was closely connected to the silk trader, Ser Francesco del Giocondo, who married Lisa Gherardini in 1495.
