Filippo Strozzi the Younger

He is best remembered as a tragic hero and defender of the lost Florentine republic against the Medici dukes – yet this is almost entirely a nineteenth-century fiction of nationalist historians and dramatists.

From the late fifteenth century, Medici power rendered the Florentine nobility, including the various branches of the Strozzi family, more courtiers than citizens.

[2] When Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici) ascended to the papacy in 1513, Florence effectively ceased to be an independent state.

A few bankers benefited enormously, none more so than Filippo the Younger, who married Leo's niece, and who was instrumental in a massive transfer of wealth from Florence to Rome.

He died in Florence's Fortress of San Giovanni Battista, either committing suicide or being killed by order of Cosimo de' Medici.