Font’ all’ Erta then came into the possession of the Nuti, and Bernadino Nuti sold it in 1506 to Taddeo Gaddi, a grandson of the great painter Taddeo who was an intimate friend of Dante. Taddeo the elder made a large collection of manuscripts of the Divine Comedy which he afterwards left to his son Angelo who, discarding the brush for trade, established a banking-house at Venice with some of his brothers and at last persuaded his father also to join him. Thenceforward, remarks Litta, Taddeo only painted occasionally, from habit. Angelo died at Venice in 1378 (or 1387), leaving his riches and manuscripts to his nephew Angelo, who increased the collection by purchase and by copies made with his own hand. Taddeo, Angelo’s son, as already said bought Font’ all’ Erta in 1506. He was three times elected a Prior of the Republic of Florence, and in 1496 was one of the Ten Magistrates of Liberty and Peace at the time of the war with Pisa. In 1527 he received Antonio Bonsi, the ambassador sent by Pope Clemente VII, (who declared that unless he returned to Florence he would not be buried in consecrated ground) “to try to reason and treat with the city. But no sooner did he (Bonsi) arrive at Camerata in the villa of the Gaddi, than the Signoria, declining to hear him or to listen to any explanations, sent Messer Bartolomeo Gualterotti to tell him to depart immediately, and Andrea Giugni to accompany him out of the state and to see their orders were obeyed.” Clemente paid for the reception of his ambassador by creating Taddeo’s son Niccolò a cardinal in May 1527; but at Bologna two years later Niccolò lost the favour of the Pope by warmly pleading the cause of the Florentine envoys, and became an avowed enemy of the house of Medici. In 1532 Taddeo Gaddi died and Font’ all’ Erta went to his son Sinibaldo, one of the richest citizens of Florence and allied by marriage with the Strozzi. When Duke Alessandro de’ Medici was murdered in 1537 by his cousin Lorenzino, Cardinal Niccolò Gaddi was one of the chief promoters of the efforts made by the exiled Florentines to restore the republic. Leaving Rome with the Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi he hastened to Florence to collect troops and partisans. But the young Cosimo was too wily. Cardinal Salviati had to fly the city, Ridolfi hid in his own house, and “Gaddi,” writes old Varchi, “went like a plucked fowl to his brother’s villa at Camerata,” where he lay in hiding for some days and then left for Bologna.