Tradition says that the ancestor of the noble house of Rucellai was a Messer Ferro, who came from Brittany with an Emperor, and took up his abode at Campi, near Florence, where the family still own a fine villa. But according to Count Passerini,[83] an acknowledged authority, the real founder was Alamanno di Monte, a rich cloth merchant who, whilst travelling in the Levant about 1250, observed that a beautiful violet dye was extracted from the herb Oricella (_Lichen Rocella_ of Linnæus); he introduced it into Florence, and from it the family took their name. Bernardo, his grandson, commonly called Naddo di Giunta, was Prior in 1302, the first of eighty-five the Rucellai gave to Florence; six years later he was Gonfalonier of Justice, and after him thirteen others of the family filled that important post. He built the chapel of Sta. Caterina, in Sta. Maria Novella, in which is the stately Madonna, said by Vasari to have been painted by Cimabue, whose triumphant progress through Florence he describes so vividly. Bencivenni, his son, generally known as Cenni di Naddo, played an important part in the faction fights between the Whites and the Blacks, and was six times elected a Prior of his native city. When Gonfalonier of Justice in 1328 he raised 60,000 golden florins to continue the war against Castruccio Castrocane, and by his energy and acumen saved Florence from falling into the clutches of the house of Anjou. After the city, owing to the incapacity of Malatesta da Rimini, General of the Florentine army, was seized by the Duke of Athens, Bencivenni’s son Naddo was beheaded, and he only saved his own life by taking refuge as a novice in the Dominican monastery of Sta. Maria Novella until the city had thrown off the yoke of the tyrant. Bencivenni was a man of large views and great prudence, he defended the people against the nobles and was so trusted by them that it was a common saying when a man was condemned to death, “God can save thee, or Cenni di Naddo.” The Rucellai then lived near the Piazza Vecchia di Sta. Maria Novella, and the Via di Cenni is supposed to take its name from him. Andrea, another of Naddo’s sons, having no taste for commerce, took service in France, where he was knighted, and fought in the wars against England. When eventually he returned to Florence he was made Castellano of Carmignano and the adjacent strong places guarding the Pisan and Lucchese frontiers. A few days before his death he determined to knight his two sons, Albizzo and Francesco; and as five marriages were to take place in the Rucellai family, he gave a splendid entertainment for the seven events in the cloisters of Sta. Maria Novella, which for a whole week resounded with music and dancing, singing and feasting. “Never,” says an old chronicler, “was so magnificent a sight.” [Illustration: PALAZZO RUCELLAI.]