Several of the Mozzi were gallant soldiers, and became knights of the Golden Spur. Vanni fought against the Pisans in 1292, and three years later was sent as ambassador to the Pope, to beg him once more to intervene in the internal dissensions of the city. Luigi Mozzi was amongst those sent to Venice to negociate a treaty in 1337, and four years later he was one of the twenty citizens of Florence who treated for the purchase of Lucca. Afterwards he arranged a league with Siena and Perugia. Marcantonio, canon of the cathedral of Sta. Maria del Fiore in 1707, a man of considerable learning, was an “Arcadian,” under the name of Dariseo Gortinano, and Archconsul of the Academia della Crusca. His brother, Pier-Giannozzo Mozzi, was created a Count of the Empire by Napoleon I.

It must have been a grandson of Pier-Giannozzo whom Sir Horace Mann mentions as the friend of the eccentric Lady Orford. She died at Pisa in 1781, and Mann writes: “Mozzi brought me her writing-box, which I opened in his presence, and of a lawyer’s, in which I saw a paper sealed with her seal, and, wrote on the cover by her, ‘A copy of my last will.’... She has left everything she was possessed of to Mozzi.... He is one of the most antient families among the nobilità here, and not poor for this country. She, to be sure, chose him for his beauty, which was then great and in its prime, but she wished it to be thought that his learning (for which he is distinguished, and he has just published some approved works on Mathematicks) biassed her choice.... Mozzi’s attention has been greatly rewarded.” In 1784 Sir Horace notes that “Florence is much amused by the marriage of Lady Orford’s old Cicisbeo, Cavaliere Mozzi.”

The old palace and its large garden was sold by the last of the family a few years ago to the Dowager Princess Carolath Beuthen.

PALAZZO NERLI
Via de’ Servi. No. 10.

WINDOW OF PALAZZO NERLI.

This quaintly shaped palace with a fine courtyard, and ending in a sharp angle at Via de’ Castellaccio, belonged to the ancient family of the Nerli, praised by Dante as still living soberly according to the good old fashion.

“... The sons I saw

Of Nerli, and of Vecchio, well content

With unrobed jerkins; and their good dames handling