d. He died long before his doubly-wronged,
unhappy wife, Eleanora, on the 27th February 1620.

* * * * *

With Cammilla de' Martelli came the end of the prosperous reign and the
end of the profligate life of Cosimo de' Medici, last Duke of Florence
and first Grand Duke of Tuscany. She was the youngest of the two
daughters, the only children, of Messer Antonio di Domenico de'
Martelli, and his wife, Madonna Fiammetta, the daughter of Messer
Niccolo de' Soderini, a descendant of that earlier Niccolo, the
self-seeking and unscrupulous adviser of Don Piero de' Medici.

The Martelli traced their origin through two lines of ancestry: to the
Picciandoni of Pisa in the thirteenth century, and to the Stabbielli of
the Val di Sieve in the fourteenth. They appear to have settled in the
Via degli Spadai, and to have "hammered" among the armourers there, so
successfully, that their name was given to the street in lieu of its
more ancient designation.

Messer Domenico, Cammilla's great-grandfather, was one of Savonarola's
keenest opponents, chiefly in the interests of the Medici, and the great
Cosimo counted him among his most trusty friends, but he suffered for
his fidelity by being assassinated in 1531, by one Paolo del Nero.
Another relative of Cammilla died tragically, Lodovico, who was killed
by Giovanni Bandini in a duel at Poggio Baroncelli in 1530--a duel
fought for the hand and heart of the beauteous Marietta de' Ricci, a
relative of that other fateful flirt, Cassandra, who was the cause of
Pietro Buonaventuri's tragic death, and died by the knives of assassins.

The Martelli were associated with many of the pious works of the Medici:
for example, they assisted munificently in the building and endowment of
the great church of San Lorenzo. In some way or other Messer Antonio had
lit on evil days, at all events he appears to have lost the banking
business, which had been mainly operative in the raising of his house,
and had reverted to the less lucrative but still honourable occupation
of his family--the craft of sword-making. He carried on his business in
a house which he rented under the shadow of the Palazzo Pitti.

Both Cammilla and her elder sister Maria were good-looking girls. The
latter, in 1566, married a wealthy shoemaker from Siena, Gaspare
Chinucci, but her husband divorced her; and then Duke Cosimo caused her
father to marry her, in 1572, to an opulent foreign merchant--Messer