The pope hired a military to rescue her and drive Charles’s army out of Florence. Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519 – 1574), First Grand Duke of Tuscany who restored the Medici luster, reviving their affect but dominated with little concern for the welfare of his subjects. He built a tunnel, the Vasari Corridor between his palace and the seat of government.
Catherine de Medici was born into a wealthy and highly effective household that had ruled the Italian city state of Florence because the early 1400s. Under her great-great-grandfather, Cosimo (1389–1464), Florence had turn out to be a rich and cultured city famous all through the world for its art and studying. The metropolis flourished much more dazzlingly in the course of the rule of his son, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449–1492), though Lorenzo’s brutal political insurance policies contributed to rising resentment of Medici wealth and energy. Catherine’s father, Lorenzo (1492–1519), dominated from only 1516 to his death in 1519.
The Medici family was a strong and influential Florentine household from the thirteenth to 17th century. The household produced three popes, numerous rulers of Florence, and later members of the French royalty. Upon the dying of his first son, Cosimo contemplated restoring the Florentine republic, both upon Anna Maria Luisa’s dying, or on his own, if he predeceased her. The restoration of the republic would entail resigning Siena to the Holy Roman Empire, but, regardless, it was vehemently endorsed by his authorities. Europe largely ignored Cosimo’s plan, only England and the Dutch Republic gave any credence to it, and the plan in the end died with Cosimo III in 1723. Cosimo and his father began the Medici foundations in banking, manufacturing – including a form of franchises – wealth, art, cultural patronage, and in the Papacy that ensured their success for generations.
This century-long rule was interrupted solely on two occasions (between 1494–1512 and 1527–1530), when anti-Medici factions took management of Florence. Following the assassination of Duke Alessandro, power passed to the “junior” Medici branch—those descended from Lorenzo the Elder, the youngest son of Giovanni di Bicci, starting together with his great-great-grandson Cosimo I “the Great.” For a lot of the thirteenth century, the leading banking centre in Italy was Siena. But in 1298, one of the main banking families of Europe, the Bonsignoris, went bankrupt, and town of Siena misplaced its standing as the banking centre of Italy to Florence.
Another outstanding figure of the 16th-century Medici household was Cosimo I, who rose from relatively modest beginnings in the Mugello to achieve supremacy over the whole of Tuscany. Against the opposition of Catherine de’ Medici, Paul III and their allies, he prevailed in varied the function of the organ’s stops is to battles to beat Florence’s hated rival Siena and located the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Cosimo bought a portion of the island of Elba from the Republic of Genoa and primarily based the Tuscan navy there.
The Medici turned leaders of Christendom by way of their two well-known sixteenth century popes, Leo X and Clement VII. Both additionally served as de facto political rulers of Rome, Florence, and huge swaths of Italy known as the Papal States. Members of the family rose to some prominence within the early 14th century in the wool trade, particularly with France and Spain. Despite the presence of some Medici within the metropolis’s authorities institutions, they were nonetheless far much less notable than different excellent households such as the Albizzi or the Strozzi. One Salvestro de’ Medici was speaker of the woolmakers’ guild through the Ciompi revolt of 1378–82, and one Antonio de’ Medici was exiled from Florence in 1396.
An exceedingly discontented pairing, this union produced three youngsters, notably Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, Electress Palatine, and the final Medicean Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone de’ Medici. The Medici family came from the agricultural Mugello region north of Florence, and they are first mentioned in a doc of 1230. The dynasty started with the founding of the Medici Bank in Florence in 1397. In 1537 he was assassinated by a companion who was additionally a relative.