Obizzi

The House of Obizzi, which claimed descent from the Frankish Counts of Burgundy, was a prominent Italian noble family of Padua, who amassed great political power and wealth as feudatories of the Este, and is noted as early as the eleventh century.

[1] Tommaso degli Obizzi, who was a general of Pope Urban V and was appointed to a regency council in Ferrara by the dying Alberto d'Este, was the first Italian to be inducted into the Order of the Garter.

The Saint Jerome altarpiece by Antonio Vivarini now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, was purchased by him and eventually passed to the Este in Austria,[4] with other early Italian paintings that made it one of the first of its kind in Europe.

The complex was inherited by Archduke Franz Ferdinand d'Este, who removed the early paintings to his primary residence, Konopiště, where, after his assassination at Sarajevo, they were housed until World War II.

The remainder at Catajo, property the late archduke's heir, Karl I, the last Emperor and King of Austria-Hungary, was sequestered as war reparations by the Italian State, which resold it in 1926 to the Dalla Francesca family, who currently open it to the public.