Tito Strozzi

Was born in 1467 into an ancient family of Florentine origin, at thirty he married the sixteen year old Alessandra Benucci. He was a friend of Ludovico Ariosto. He should not be confused with Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, also a friend of Ariosto, younger than this Tito by about forty years and a member of another branch of the Strozzi family, that had moved to Ferrara about a century before. Probably, Tito Strozzi moved to Apulia for commercial reasons, or maybe to do business for relatives, rich Florentine bankers. It is in Apulia, at Barletta, that he met Alessandra Benucci. After they married, in 1498, he moved to Ferrara, where he remained until he died, in 1515. he and his wife lived in contrada Santa Maria in Vado, not far from Palazzo Strozzi and Santa Maria di Bocche. In those years Tito wrote to his relatives in Florence to document them on the life led by the Strozzi in Ferrara. In the seven letters he wrote to Matteo and Lorenzo Strozzi, between 1498 and 1508, he gave information on the family, and spoke of the unfortunate murder of Ercole Strozzi, found dead in the street and killed for obscure motives. In Ferrara, Tito at first lived within the sphere of influence of his mighty cousins then to emancipate and obtain charges and missions from Cardinal Ippolito and Duke Alfonso I d’Este. For Duke Alfonso he acted as go-between with his relatives the Florentine bankers so as to replenish the Este coffers during the war against Venice and Julius II. He went to Florence several times for this very reason, but was also sent to  Rome and to Genoa. For the Cardinal, he also ran some less hefty errands, as special courier, for the purchase of horses, damasks, gold thread and silk.  The payments the Ducal Chamber made to Tito Strozzi came only from time to time, whilst he only got a permanent post in 1514 with the ‘superiorato della lana’, controlling the wool trade. When he died he left Alessandra the income from his inheritance, the amount of which is unknown.

Strozzi coat of arms, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi