Cosimo I, his collateral descendant, was like all his house a patron of men of letters; he lived much at Petraja, and wishing to have Varchi near him “to enjoy his sweet converse,” lent him “La Topaja,” a small villa on the hillside above Petraja. Poets, artists and strangers of note who came to Florence, toiled up the steep road to visit the great historian, and Varchi must often have entertained there the celebrated courtezan Tullia d’ Arragona, whose portrait at Brescia by Bonvicino fully justifies the passionate verses addressed to her by so many poets of that time. ... “occhi belli. Occhi leggiadri, occhi amorosi e cari, Piu che le stelle belle e piu che il sole.” writes Muzio; while Ercole Bentivoglo indited sonnets to her celestial brow. Tasso called her “la mia Signora,” and Alessandro Arrighi praised her wise conversation, her most rare beauty, and her singing, which could turn a marble statue into flesh and blood. Tullia was the daughter of Cardinal Luigi d’ Arragona (son of the Marquis of Gerace, a natural son of Francis I of Arragon, King of Naples, and of Diana Guardato). Born in Rome and educated in Siena and Florence, she aspired to be a second Sappho. Varchi, in spite of the silvered hair he talks so much about, evidently succumbed to the charms of the beautiful woman, and even when love had cooled into a platonic friendship he continued to polish and sometimes re-write, in his elegant scholarly language, the sonnets and verses of the lovely Tullia. Her reputation as a poetess induced Cosimo to excuse her from wearing the yellow veil, odious sign of her profession. The sonnet sent with her petition, which is still in the state archives of Florence, bears _Fasseli gratia per poetessa_ in his handwriting on the margin. In her old age she became devout and was a protegée of the pious Duchess Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo. Tullia’s poem _Guerrino il Meschino_, which she declared to be the versification of a Spanish story, was written about this time; it is no doubt an old popular tale, and some critics hold that from it Dante took the conception of his Divine Comedy. In the preface she rates Boccaccio soundly for “the improper, indecent and truly abominable things” in his book, and wonders how people calling themselves Christians can hear his name mentioned without making the sign of the Holy Cross. “Yet,” she goes on, “so corrupt is our nature, that the book is not avoided as an abomination, but run after by all.” Poor Tullia, when young and beautiful she no doubt read the _Decameron_ with as much zest as other people, and one cannot help thinking she must occasionally have been rather bored in her new rôle of a well-conducted woman. Her patroness Eleonora, disliked in spite of many virtues by the Florentines on account of her “insopportabile gravità,” died in 1562, and Tullia did not long survive her.