only regained his liberty after the death of the great Lucchese. He was often sent as ambassador to various Italian cities, but disgraced his name by the ferocity he showed in torturing the followers of the Duke of Athens in 1343. One of the leaders of the revolt against the tyrant he was foremost in inciting the people to brutal and loathsome acts of cruelty. His niece Giovanna, married to Benci Aldobrandini, deserves mention as a remarkable woman, of such wisdom and intelligence that the magistrates always consulted her when in any difficulty. She was simply called “Madonna,” as we might say, “the Lady,” and the square where her husband’s house stood still bears the name of Piazza Madonna. Antonio degl’Altoviti passed nearly all his life at Rome and married a niece of Innocent VIII., whose banker he was. To him the Pope gave, to the exclusion of the other branches of the family, the absolute patronage of the church of S.S. Apostoli, where he was buried in 1508 in the fine tomb sculptured by Benedetto da Rovezzano for his brother Oddo. Bindo, his son, who succeeded him in business, made an enormous fortune, and was the friend of all the great artists of that time. Michelangelo gave him the cartoon for one of the frescoes of the Sistine chapel, and is said to have modelled the rare medal showing Bindo Altoviti’s head on one side and one of his emblems, a woman clinging to a column surrounded by waves, on the reverse. Raphael painted his portrait as a young man, and executed for him the Madonna dell’Impanata now in the gallery of the Pitti palace. Bevenuto Cellini modelled and cast his bust in bronze,[15] while Jacopo Sansovino designed a magnificent fireplace for his palace in Florence, which Benedetto da Rovezzano decorated with delicate bas-reliefs. Vasari also worked for him, painting the altar picture in the Altoviti chapel in S. S. Apostoli and two loggie in his palace at Rome. A violent antagonist of the Medici he not only expended large sums in aid of the exiles, but sent one of his sons to fight under Piero Strozzi against Cosimo I. at Siena. Another son, Antonio, entered the church and was made Archbishop of Florence by Paul III., very much as an act of hostility towards Cosimo, who retaliated by sequestering the revenues of the archbishopric and forbidding Altoviti to enter Tuscany. It was only in 1568, owing to the intervention of Pius V., that he was at length enabled to take possession of his see. His entrance into the city and his spiritual marriage with the Abbess of S. Pier Maggiore were conducted with such solemnity and pomp that Cosimo was profoundly irritated, and decreed that the ancient ceremony of the mystic nuptials of the Archbishop and the Abbess should be for ever abolished. Canon Moreni has published an account by an eyewitness of how the guardians, or patrons, of the archbishopric, with all the clergy, met Altoviti at the gate of the city bearing long staves, with green