Everything about Peruzzi totally explained
» Baldassare Peruzzi was a leading Italian architect of the earlier 16th century; his son Giovanni Sallustio Peruzzi was also an architect.
The
Peruzzi were bankers of
Florence, among the leading families of the city in the
14th century, before the rise to prominence of the
Medici. Their modest antecedents stretched back to the mid
11th century, according to the family's genealogist Luigi Passerini, but a restructuring of the Peruzzii company in
1300, with an infusion of outside capital, marked the start of a quarter-century of prosperity that brought the family consortium to the forefront of Florentine affairs. Semi-public patronage reaffirmed the Peruzzi status in Florence: in his will in 1299, Donato di Arnoldo Peruzzi left money for a memorial chapel in a transept of the
Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence. It was probably his grandson Giovanni di Rinieri Peruzzi who was
Giotto's patron in frescoing the walls with murals honoring John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, which Giotto executed, starting in 1313.
For economic historians the surviving account books of the Peruzzi cover the years 1335–1343, and provide an indispensable primary source for the economic history of the city on the cusp of the late Medieval and
Early Modern period. The contemporary chronicler
Giovanni Villani is the other prime source for the family's affairs.
The company that bore the Peruzzi name was run by a half-dozen family members, and there were many Peruzzi who were neither active nor silent partners, pursuing other careers, even amassing independent capital. The company's courier system acted as an intelligence-gathering system often embroiled in diplomacy. The size of the bank shouldn't be understated: by the 1330s, the Peruzzi bank was the second largest in Europe, with fifteen branches from the Middle East to London, all capitalized to the sum of more than 100000 gold florins and manned by approximately 100 factors.
Peruzzi capital had been amassed in the textile business that was the main engine of Florence's prosperity. English wool finished as high-quality cloth in
Bruges was bought by Peruzzi
fattori and distributed to the luxurious courts of
Paris,
Avignon or
Naples, or returned to
London. Peruzzi connections with the
Knights Hospitallers gained them important local leverage in
Rhodes, the economic capital of the Aegean and a transshipping port for silks, drugs, spices and luxuries from the East. Trade beyond Italy required agents and instruments of credit, extending the family business beyond its extended membership into an international network. In Italy was developed the
double-entry bookkeeping that made such complicated financial transactions possible. By the opening of the 14th century, the main activity of the Peruzzi had switched to wholesale commodities trading on a very large scale, especially in grain exported from the Angevine
Kingdom of Naples to the central Italian cities—for which they were granted a monopoly— and to banking, the field for which they're remembered: popes, nobles, bourgeois, towns and abbeys drew loans from the Peruzzi. But great clients incurred great risks. In
1343 the Peruzzi consortium collapsed and was bankrupt in
1345, with their partners in risk-capital, the
Bardi.
The traditional explanation, of unsecured loans extended to
Edward III of England, is currently considered simplistic. In fact, several factors destabilized the network of trade. The war with
Castruccio Castracane of
Lucca bled Florentine specie to pay for mercenaries, while France and England went to war over
Aquitaine and the peasants of
Flanders rose up in a revolt that was put down with the aid of mercenaries purchased with Peruzzi
florins.
Not all family fortune were tied in the bankruptcy, and the Peruzzi continued to figure among the prominent families of Florence, the
patrizii di Firenze. In 1849, in the wake of the disturbances of 1848, the
gonfaloniere of Florence was Ubaldino Peruzzi (giuseppe Conti,
Firenze Vecchia).
The tower of the fortified
Villa Peruzzi in the comune of Antella south of Florence controls the main road into the
Chianti district.
Members of the family who emigrated to America in the late 19th century and settled in Pennsylvania founded the Peruzzi chain of automobile dealerships and the
Planters Nut and Chocolate Company.
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