Lisa del Giocondo, born in Florence in 1479, married a cloth and silk merchant as a teenager, and her husband later became a local official. She was the mother of six children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable, ordinary life. Her name is attached to the Mona Lisa because her husband commissioned the portrait from Leonardo da Vinci in the Italian Renaissance. Little is documented about her life, but in 2005 researchers identified her as the subject of a Leonardo portrait from around 1503, strongly backing the traditional view. She outlived her husband, who was fourteen years older.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.