The powerful and rich “consorteria,” or clan, of the Tornaquinci had their palaces, towers, loggie and shops, where now stands this palace. Their origin is lost in obscurity, but we know that the Emperor Otho I. allowed them to erect dams in the bed of the Arno near their houses. When the second circle of walls was built round Florence the gate, afterwards called S. Pancrazio, and a square, where now stands the Palazzo Strozzi, bore their name. Figliocaro Tornaquinci was Consul of the army in 1166 and in 1215, and his descendants fought at Montaperti on the side of the Guelphs in 1260. They divided into five different families in the XIVth century, of whom only the head of one branch, Simone, who took the name of Tornabuoni in 1393, interests us. His son Francesco was Commissary with the army of Carlo Malatesta and later was sent to Venice, to try and induce the Venetians to enter Lombardy against the Duke of Milan. A keen man of business, he stood high in favour with Cosimo de’ Medici and zealously worked to promote his return from exile in 1434. His daughter Lucrezia married Piero de’ Medici and their son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, owed much to her prudence and sagacity and inherited her poetic talent. Giovanni Tornabuoni, her brother, was treasurer to Sixtus IV. and head of the Medici bank at Rome, where his wife Francesca died in childbirth in September, 1477, and his letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici shows how deeply he mourned her. Vasari tells us that having caused a sepulchre to be made to her in the Minerva “he willed also that Domenico Ghirlandaio should paint the walls of the chapel wherein she was buried.”28 Giovanni afterwards gave him the commission to paint the wonderful frescoes in the choir of Sta. Maria Novella, which we know from the diary of Luca Landucci were begun in 1486 and finished in 1490; not as Vasari states between 1481 and 1485.

Luca Landucci’s son Benedetto, who knew many of the people figured in the frescoes pointed them out in 1561, when he was eighty-nine years old, to Vincenzio Tornaquinci, who fortunately noted down his words.29 Giovanni Tornabuoni is to the right of the great central window, kneeling bareheaded with his hands crossed over his breast, and opposite to him kneels his wife Francesca, her hands folded in prayer, with a white kerchief on her head. Signor E. Ridolfi exposes another of Vasari’s mistakes, which has often been blindly copied without verifying the dates.30 Vasari states that “Ginevra de’ Benci, then a beautiful maiden” is one of the women in the fresco of the Visitation of Our Lady to S. Elizabeth. Ginevra was born in 1557, married to Luigi Niccolini in 1573 and died on the 17th August in the same year, so she could not have been painted by Ghirlandaio between 1486–1490. The beautiful maiden is Giovanni Tornabuoni’s daughter-in-law, the lovely and accomplished Giovanna degl’Albizzi, whose marriage to Lorenzo Tornabuoni was celebrated with such pomp in Florence in 1486. Two years later Niccolò Fiorentino made six medals of the Tornabuoni family. Two of Giovanni, one of his son Lorenzo, one of his daughter Lodovica, and two of his daughter-in-law Giovanna, and the latter indubitably represent the same person as the slender, swan-necked girl, in a splendid dress of gold brocade in Ghirlandaio’s fresco. She died, fortunately for her, before the plot to reinstate Piero de’ Medici was discovered. “On the 17th August, 1497,” writes Luca Landucci, “the Pratica met, and were in the palace from morning until midnight; they were more than one hundred and eighty. And by vote it was determined that they [the accused] should die, and all they had be confiscated. Five were executed; first Bernardo del Nero, and then Niccolò Ridolfi, Giovanni Cambi, Gianozzo Pucci and Lorenzo Tornabuoni, and all the people grieved for them. Every one wondered that such a thing should be done and could scarcely believe it. They were executed that very night, and I shed many tears when I saw the youth Lorenzo on a bier passing Tornaquinci just before daybreak.”

From Niccolò Fiorentino’s medals Signor Ridolfi has been able to identify the young girl visiting S. Anne as Ludovica, Giovanni Tornabuoni’s daughter, who was then about thirteen. Like her sister-in-law she is clothed in gold brocade and has her hair dressed in the same fashion. It seems impossible that Ghirlandaio did not paint Lucrezia de’ Medici among the other members of the Tornabuoni family, the more so that he chose for the subject of his fresco the life of S. John the Baptist, which she had translated into ottava rima. She died, it is true, three years before he began the work, but there must have been portraits of her in existence, although none have come down to us. Even after the death of her husband Piero, Lucrezia exercised more authority than usually fell to the share of Tuscan women; both Poliziano and Pulci praise her poetic gifts and Niccolò Valori writes: “she was very eloquent, as can be seen in her translations into our tongue of parts of Holy Writ.” He adds: “Lorenzo was most deferential to her, and after his father’s death loved and honoured her; showing in all his actions not only the affection borne to a mother, but such respect as is given to a father; it was hard for any to discern whether he most loved or honoured her.” Her nephew Lorenzo Tornabuoni was decapitated, and his family exiled, in 1497, for plotting against the liberty of the Republic in favour of the Medici. A descendant of his, Niccolò, Bishop of Borgo S. Sepolcro and ambassador to France towards the end of the XVIth century, introduced the tobacco plant into Tuscany, which for some time was called “l’erba Tornabuoni” after him.

Lorenzo Ridolfi bought the Tornabuoni houses and incorporated them into one large palace in the beginning of the XVIth century, but when he rebelled and his son was decapitated in 1575, all his estates were confiscated and the palace became the property of the Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici. He sold it to the rich citizen Jacopo Corsi, a friend and protector of Peri, and here, in a theatre built on purpose, his opera Dafne, with words by Rinuccini was given for the first time.

The Corsi are said to have come from Dicomano and one of the family fought under the Ghibelline standard at Montaperti and was exiled in 1268. Their name first appears in the magistrature of Florence in 1354, when Bardo Corsi was the first of nine Gonfaloniers of Justice and two years later the first of twenty-eight Priors of the family. Giovanni, his descendant, was entrusted by Clement VII. with the care of Alessandro de’ Medici, and with him, Ippolito and the Cardinal Passerini, he left Florence in 1527. After the capitulation of the city he was elected Gonfalonier of Justice and showed great cruelty in sentencing his fellow-citizens who were anti-Medicean. His brother Bardo made an enormous fortune in trade at Naples, and in 1617 bought the feudal estate of Cajazzo, when Philip of Spain created him a Marquess with remainder to his nephews, the sons of Jacopo, who purchased the old Tornabuoni palace. His granddaughter Laura married the Marquess Salviati and the palace then took the name of Corsi Salviati. When in 1864 it was decided to widen Via Tornabuoni the façade was thrown back many feet and the pretty little loggia, built by Cigoli, was moved from the southern corner of the palace opposite Palazzo Strozzi to the northern. It now belongs to the Marchioness Visconti Arconati.