_Via de’ Pucci. No. 1._
Towards the end of the XVIIth century Paolo Falconieri built this
palace for the Marquess Lodovico Incontri on the site of houses
belonging to a branch of the Vespucci family. The Incontri were Lords
of Acquaviva near Volterra. Antonio fought at Montaperti, was taken
prisoner by the Ghibellines, but escaped and joined Charles of Anjou
at Naples, who knighted him and gave him the command of 200 horse, when
he fought against Manfred and Corradino. On his return to Volterra he
volunteered to lead his fellow-citizens against the Pisans and was
killed in a skirmish near Pontedera in 1291. Attilio Incontri married
the daughter of a courtier of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I. and settled
in Florence, and his son Ferdinando was made a Senator and Marquess of
Monteverdi and Canneto in 1665; his other son was Lodovico who built
the palace which now belongs to the Marquess Piccolelis.
The Vespucci to whom the original houses belonged came from Peretola
and took their name from Vespuccio, a wine merchant, who was the
first of twenty-five Priors of his house in 1350. Giuliano Vespucci
was Gonfalonier of Justice in 1462, and his son Piero commanded the
Florentine galleys on the coast of Barbary and of Syria. From him no
doubt his young cousin Amerigo, who gave his name to America, heard
many seafaring tales. Born in 1451 and brought up by his uncle, a
learned Dominican in S. Marco to whom Marsilio Ficino entrusted the
revision of his Platonic Theology, Amerigo studied languages, physics
and geometry. Admitted to the Platonic Academy he became intimate with
Toscanelli, who expounded to him his ideas as to the existence of
another hemisphere. Amerigo was manager of the Medici bank at Seville
when Columbus made his first discoveries, and entreated King Ferdinand
of Spain to take him into his service as chief pilot of another
expedition. When the news of his triumphant return after an eighteen
month’s voyage reached Florence, the Signoria ordered his house, now
incorporated in the hospital of S. Giovanni di Dio, in Borgognissanti,
to be illuminated for three nights, an honour rarely accorded by the
Commune.