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The Florentine
Stefano DallAglio is a Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena Fellow at the Medici Archive Project.
In the very last day of the year 1544, Bernardo de' Medici, Medicean ambassador to France, wrote a letter to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici about a very special football match played at the French court in Fontainebleau: Yesterday, the most illustrious Dauphin, with thirty Frenchmen played football match against
Renaissance Tuscany was notorious for its practical jokes and ‘robust’ physical humour. Examples of complicated deceptions designed to confuse, embarrass or bring someone down a notch or two can be found in the tales of Boccaccio, Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and, of course, in the
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
