Lisa del Giocondo

Born into the Gherardini family of Florence on June 15, 1479, Lisa married a cloth and silk merchant in her teens - a man considerably older who would later serve as a local official. She raised six children and lived what appears to have been a comfortable, unremarkable life in Renaissance Tuscany. Around 1503 her husband commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint her portrait. She outlived him, dying on July 14, 1542. In 2005 researchers confirmed what tradition had long held: she was the woman behind the Mona Lisa, the painting that would eclipse her entirely, becoming the most famous artwork on earth while the sitter herself vanished into history.