Giovanni Rucellai’s _Rosmunda_ shares with the _Sofonisba_ of Trissino the glory of being the first Italian tragedy. It depicts the well-known story of Alboin, who turned the skull of his wife’s father into a wine-cup, out of which he forces her to drink. When Giovanni died in 1526 he bequeathed to his brother Palla and to his friend Trissino a poem on bees. An eyewitness related to Scipione Ammirato how “these two friends when together in a room would jump upon a bench, declaim passages out of their tragedies, and then call upon the audience to decide which was the best. In one of these contests Rucellai inadvertently got upon the bench with his braces undone, and Trissino in a loud voice exclaimed: ‘Now see the man who would contend with me! Like a child he does not know how to fasten his braces.’” The _Api_ was published in 1539, and Trissino undertook to see his friend’s work through the press. “It is,” writes Symonds, “no mere translation from Virgil; and though the higher qualities of variety, invention and imagination were denied to Rucellai, though he can show no passages of pathos to compete with the ‘Corycius senex,’ of humour to approach the battle of the hives, no episode, it need hardly be said, to match with ‘Pastor Aristaeus,’ still his modest poem is a monument of pure taste and classical correctness. It is the work of a ripe scholar and a melodious versifier, if not of a great singer; and its diction belongs to the best period of polite Italian.” Giovan Battista, great-grandson of Pandolfo, a favourite of Cosimo I., acted as one of the Captains in the game of calcio, celebrated in the annals of Florence for its magnificence, which was played in honour of the marriage of Cosimo’s son Francesco de’ Medici by the young Florentine nobles. Giovanni, his grandson, studied mathematics under Galileo at Pisa, and was a remarkable linguist; like so many of his family he was a fine musician and a good artist. He gave wonderful _feste_, what we should now call garden parties, at Il Pratello, the Rucellai villa near Campi, sending _tessere_ with one of the many emblems of the family to his guests, instead of invitations. By the kindness of the Countess Edith Rucellai I am enabled here to reproduce one with the emblem adopted by Bernardo after his marriage with Nannina de’ Medici--the Medicean ring and three ostrich feathers, white, green and red, denoting faith, charity and hope. Other emblems used by the family, such as a compass, a cupid, a peacock and poppies, are to be seen on the municipal palaces in towns where the Rucellai were Vicarii or Governors for Florence, on the façade of Sta. Maria Novella, of the Rucellai palace, and of their loggia. The oldest, Fortune standing in a ship and holding up a sail to catch the wind, alludes to the great commercial gains which had enriched the house. [Illustration]