Gualdrada Berti

This marriage was politically advantageous for Florence, as it stopped the ongoing hostile relationship between the Conti Guido family and the city.

[1] Gualdrada continued to work as a mediator between the Conti Guido and Florence, with records showing her acting as a head of her family to free a monastery owned by the Guidi from an armed Florentine threat.

The historical reliability of this story, however, has been contested by scholars, as it is said to take place in 1209, a time where there is evidence of Gualdrada's sons already being adults.

Gualdrada overheard this exchange and bravely objected, stating that "no living man would ever kiss her except her husband," solidifying her character as one of womanly virtue and purity.

[1] The so-called Room of Gualdrada (Sala di Gualdrada) was located in the quarters of Eleanor of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, and it features a painted ceiling of the episode recounted by Villani and Boccaccio painted by the Flemish artist Stradanus, also known as Giovanni Stradano, surrounded by detailed scenes of sixteenth-century Florence and allegories of virtue.

Her name appears in Canto XVI, line 37 of Inferno, when Dante meets the Florentine man, Guido Guerra V, in the ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell reserved for the sodomites.

Dante himself was not only a Florentine, but a (White) Guelph, so the marriage between Gualdrada, a member of a notable Ghibelline clan, to Guido Guerra III, a Guelph leader, which ended hostilities between the two factions in the city of Florence, is an event that would be understandably important to him and worthy of praise and admiration.