The Vespucci to whom the original houses belonged came from Peretola and took their name from Vespuccio, a wine merchant, who was the first of twenty-five Priors of his house in 1350. Giuliano Vespucci was Gonfalonier of Justice in 1462, and his son Piero commanded the Florentine galleys on the coast of Barbary and of Syria. From him no doubt his young cousin Amerigo, who gave his name to America, heard many seafaring tales. Born in 1451 and brought up by his uncle, a learned Dominican in S. Marco to whom Marsilio Ficino entrusted the revision of his Platonic Theology, Amerigo studied languages, physics and geometry. Admitted to the Platonic Academy he became intimate with Toscanelli, who expounded to him his ideas as to the existence of another hemisphere. Amerigo was manager of the Medici bank at Seville when Columbus made his first discoveries, and entreated King Ferdinand of Spain to take him into his service as chief pilot of another expedition. When the news of his triumphant return after an eighteen month’s voyage reached Florence, the Signoria ordered his house, now incorporated in the hospital of S. Giovanni di Dio, in Borgognissanti, to be illuminated for three nights, an honour rarely accorded by the Commune. PALAZZO PITTI _Piazza Pitti_ Buonaccorso Pitti, in his delightful chronicle,[55] tells us that the Pitti, being Guelphs, were expelled from the castle of Semifonte by the Ghibellines in 1202, when they divided into three branches. “We of the third branch,” he writes, “settled at Castelvecchio in the Val di Pesa, where we bought large and rich estates.... A few years later our ancestors came to live in Florence, and their first houses were those which now belong to the Machiavelli in the parish of Sta. Felicita. I have heard tell by Neri, my father, that one of our ancestors, named Bonsignore, went to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and to Sta. Caterina on Mount Sinai; he never came back, nor is it known where he died. When he left Florence his wife was with child, and she bore a son who was called Bonsignore after his father. From him sprang Maffeo, who was a rich, powerful and honourable citizen, and from the book in which the names of all who have been Priors are written, it appears he was a Prior in 1283. Maffeo had, amongst others, two sons; the eldest was Ciore, the second Buonaccorso ... according to reliable accounts was a good and trustworthy man.... By his wife Monna Giovanna degl’Infangati he had six sons and three daughters.... Neri his son, our father, made a very large fortune in the wool trade. I find that every year he made eleven hundredweight of cloth, most of which was sent to Apulia. He was most industrious and active in his business, and the French wool that came into our workshops was turned into perfect cloth. His last building was the Tiratoio,[56] which cost about 3,500 florins. It seems he did not care about taking office under the Commune, but he was twice Prior.