In the Via Tornabuoni, the continuation of the Piazza Santa Trinità, stands the finest of all Florentine palaces of the Renaissance, the Palazzo Strozzi. It was begun in 1489 for the elder Filippo Strozzi, with the advice and encouragement of Lorenzo the Magnificent, by Benedetto da Maiano, and continued by Simone del Pollaiuolo (called "Cronaca" from his yarning propensities), to whom the cornice and court are due. It was finished for the younger Filippo Strozzi, the husband of Clarice dei Medici, shortly before his fall, in the days of Duke Alessandro. The works in iron on the exterior--lanterns, torch-holders and the like, especially a wonderful _fanale_ at the corner--are by Niccolò Grosso (called "Caparra" from his habit of demanding payment in advance), and the finest things of their kind imaginable. Filippo Strozzi played a curiously inconstant part in the history of the closing days of the Republic. After having been the most intimate associate of his brother-in-law, the younger Lorenzo, he was instrumental first in the expulsion of Ippolito and Alessandro, then in the establishment of Alessandro's tyranny; and finally, finding himself cast by the irony of fate for the part of the last Republican hero, he took the field against Duke Cosimo, only to find a miserable end in a dungeon. One of his daughters, Luisa Capponi, was believed to have been poisoned by order of Alessandro; his son, Piero, became the bravest Italian captain of the sixteenth century and carried on a heroic contest with Cosimo's mercenary troops. [Illustration: ARMS OF THE STROZZI] Down the Via della Vigna Nuova is another of these Renaissance palaces, built for a similar noble family associated with the Medici,--the Palazzo Rucellai. Bernardo Rucellai--who was not originally of noble origin, but whose family had acquired what in Florence was the real title to nobility, vast wealth in commerce--married Nannina, the younger sister of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and had this palace begun for him in 1460 by Bernardo Rossellino from the design of Leo Battista Alberti,--to whom also the Rucellai loggia opposite is due. More of Alberti's work for the Rucellai may be seen at the back of the palace, in the Via della Spada, where in the former church of San Pancrazio (which gave its name to a _sesto_ in old Florence) is the chapel which he built for Bernardo Rucellai in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.