Highlights from the Mediceo del Principato

Mike Samuda
July 26, 2007

A letter written from Rome on 5 June 1540 by Rosso di Filippo de Medici (also kown as 'The Best') to his distant relative Cosimo I

You should know that Pavoncino has finally returned and has marvellous stories from France, Flanders and Spain about the manner with which he was treated by the kings and nobles of these countries [] The siege in Perugia is still in effect [] The heat wave arrived on May 20 and on June 1st; this forced me to remove my boots and put away my winter jacket [] I am enjoying the fresco with my wife and we are giving each other disembowelling kisses; her mouth is so overwhelming that I seriously think that a tarantula has bitten her underneath the bellybutton. [] The city has been invaded by grasshoppers, flies, horseflies, and snakes. Mosquitoes have devastated the harvest, have fallen into drinks and are floating in soups. They left only after Pope Paul III had excommunicated them all.

Stefano DallAglio
July 12, 2007

Bartolomeo Concini is reporting to his master, Cosimo I de Medici, from the Florentine military camp outside the besieged city of Siena on April 6, 1554:

Messer Giulio de’ Ricasoli has written to tell me that last night he received information from an old Florentine woman who is living in Siena in the house of a young prostitute who is the sister of the old woman’s son-in-law. The prostitute, in the course of an affair with a French engineer, has learnt that our enemies are digging a tunnel from their citadel to the cellar of our fortress which is our munitions store. She has learnt that the work is well underway and that very soon they would play a trick on us and we would find our artillery destroyed [] nobody believes the account of the tunnel since our fortress is so much higher than their citadel and nobody inside Siena knows anything about it. [] Messer Giulio has sent the old woman home after promising her a reward if she can obtain the plan of the tunnel which she claims to have seen. The prostitute will be here shortly to tell us what she knows. It is possible that the engineer was just boasting in the typical French way to make it seem that he was doing something great []

Mark Rosen
June 28, 2007

Cornelio Bentivoglio writes from Montalcino to fellow officer Giovan Luigi Vitella in Siena on the 5th of July 1559

I wish to find a way to better endure this heat with some type of delicate wine more suited to the season and to my health than those that they have here (in Montalcino). I have always found that the wines of Montepulciano are more to my taste; I am convinced that through your means and kindness you will be able to send someone to buy some wine in Montepulciano and to then bring it to me to meet my needs.