The rise of the House of Medici began in the 13th century, when Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici established the Medici Bank in 1397. His son, Cosimo de’ Medici, expanded their influence, becoming the ruler of Florence and a major patron of the arts, supporting figures like Brunelleschi and Donatello. Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, brought the family’s power to its peak, ensuring political stability and fostering Renaissance art by supporting artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. After Lorenzo’s death, the Medici faced decline. After being briefly overthrown by Savonarola’s theocratic republic, they were restored but faced financial and political challenges. In 1532, they became Dukes of Florence, but instability and assassinations, like that of Alessandro de’ Medici, plagued their rule. Cosimo I later established them as Grand Dukes of Tuscany in 1569, but their financial decline continued. Despite their persistent cultural patronage, their political influence waned, and the lineage ended with the death of Gian Gastone in 1737, followed by the demise of Anna Maria, his sister, in 1743. A tale of birth, death, war, murder, and treason. The history book is very thorough and dense, but it’s still easy to read.
“It was not the only murder in Francesco’s Isabella, was quite as unhappy in her marriage as her brothers had been and took for a lover her husband’s cousin, Troilo Orsini. Her husband, Paolo Giordano Orsini, a violent, vindictive man, had himself fallen desperately in love with Vittoria, the young and passionate wife of Francesco Accoramboni. They had taken it into their unbalanced minds to rid themselves of both Isabella and Accoramboni and then to marry each other. First Vittoria had her husband killed by professional murderers at the Villa Negroni. Then Orsini, having paid other assassins to kill his cousin, Troilo, murdered his wife at their villa of Ceretto Guidi near Empoli. He did so in a peculiarly macabre way: having waited until they had finished dinner, he signalled for four accomplices in the room above to let down a rope through a hole in the ceiling. Pretending to kiss her, he strangled his wife with the rope which the accomplices then pulled back into the room above. Announcing that Isabella had died of a sudden apoplectic seizure, Orsini soon afterwards married Vittoria, ignoring a papal ban imposed upon the marriage by Gregory XIII, and took her off to his castle at Bracciano.”