Cristina Trivulzio was the daughter of Girolamo Trivulzio and the Vittoria dei Marchesi Gherardini (member of the Gherardini family). Her father died soon after her birth and her mother remarried to Alessandro Visconti d'Aragona; she had a stepbrother and three stepsisters through this second marriage. By her own account "I was as a child melancholy, serious, introverted, quiet, so shy that I often happen to burst into tears in the living room of my mother because I realized that I was being looked at or that they wanted me to talk."Aldobrandino Malvezzi
