He was a handsome man, three braccie in height, not fat, but with good bone and muscle; his hair was reddish, and he was healthy and vigorous and lived sixty-eight years, may God give him eternal rest. His wife, my mother, Monna Curradina degl’ Strozzi, was a handsome, clever woman, of dark complexion; she lived sixty-six years. I, Buonaccorso, married Francesca degl’Albizzi ... and till now Francesca and I have had eleven children, of whom seven are alive, Luca, Ruberto, &c., &c.” [Illustration: PALAZZO PITTI.] Numerous were the adventures of Buonaccorso Pitti. Rich, able and of fine presence, he was constantly employed on embassies to divers sovereigns and sister Republics. An inveterate gambler, but with a keen eye to business, generous to his family and friends, but keeping a minute account of his daily expenses, well educated, a good Latin scholar, a bad poet and an amusing boon-companion, Buonaccorso was a typical Florentine of the XVth century. His son, Luca, born in 1398, founder of the splendid palace which still bears his name, began his political career when most lads are still at college, and his enormous wealth gave him considerable power in his native city. About 1440 Luca Pitti commissioned the great architect Brunelleschi to build for him a palace more magnificent than that of the Medici in Via Larga (now Palazzo Riccardi). “Not only,” writes Machiavelli, “did citizens and private persons contribute, and aid him with things necessary to the building, but communes and corporations lent him help.” As Gonfalonier of Justice he was able to do signal service to Cosimo de’ Medici by causing Girolamo Machiavelli, Carlo Benizzi and Niccolò Barbadori, who had lifted up their voices to warn the Florentine citizens against the ambition of the Medici, to be murdered in prison. Cosimo in return used his influence to obtain a public decree, ordaining that Luca Pitti should be created a Knight of the People in S. Giovanni with great pomp; in memory thereof Luca added the red cross, emblem of the People, to his arms. On the death of Cosimo, who was succeeded by his infirm and gouty son Piero, Luca thought his opportunity had come. Together with a far abler man, Diotisalvi Neroni, he put himself at the head of the anti-Medicean party and Florence was divided into two camps, the party of the Hill, so-called because Luca’s palace stood on the highest point of the city; and of the Plain, because the palace of the Medici was on the flat. But discord soon broke out among the Hill party, as Luca perceived that if the Medici were beaten Neroni, and not himself, would be the head of the Republic; so in 1466 he made peace with Piero de’ Medici after which, as Machiavelli tells us, “friends and relations avoided saluting him in the streets. The superb edifices begun by him were abandoned by the builders, the benefits bestowed on him in the past were changed to injuries, the honours to insults. And many of those who had freely