Maria Salviati was a Florentine noblewoman whose descendants included kings of France and England. She was also, the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici.
The noblewoman Maria Salviati, whose descendants include two kings of France and two kings of England, was born on 17th July 1499 in Florence.
Salviati was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and one of the most powerful figures of the mid-16th century. Her descendants included Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France, as well as Charles II and James II of England.
Salviati herself carried Medici blood. One of ten children, her mother was Lucrezia de’ Medici, daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Renaissance ruler famed for his patronage of Michelangelo and Botticelli. Her father, Iacopo Salviati, belonged to another of Florence’s major banking families.
She was married at 18 to Lodovico de’ Medici, better known as the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, having known him since the age of ten, when he was placed in her parents’ care following the death of his mother, Caterina Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan.
Widowed young she turned to power-broking
As a professional soldier, Giovanni spent far less time with Maria than she would have liked, and Cosimo was their only child. He died in 1526 from wounds sustained fighting on behalf of the Medici pope Clement VII against the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
Even during her husband’s long absences at war, Maria had proven herself an able manager of his business affairs, growing the family’s wealth in his absence. After his death, rather than remarry and forge another powerful alliance, she chose a different path. Dressing in the sombre clothing of a novice, she withdrew to the Castello del Trebbio, the grand Medici residence at San Piero a Sieve in the Mugello valley north of Florence.
Grooming a duke
There, her focus turned entirely to preparing her son for power. She secured Cosimo an education befitting a Renaissance prince, while deliberately shielding him from the political intrigues of Florence until the right moment arrived to advance his claim.
That moment came in 1537, when Maria’s cousin Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was assassinated by Lorenzino de’ Medici — a man who had, notably, become friends with Cosimo during his years at Trebbio. Cosimo had held a temporary position in Alessandro’s court, giving him familiarity with the mechanisms of government without any of the taint of Florentine factional politics. Maria used this to persuade the city’s elders that her son, though just 17, was ready to lead.
The elders may have assumed Cosimo’s youth and rural upbringing would make him easy to control. They were quickly proven wrong. He systematically removed every obstacle to his authority, and by 1539 was Duke of Tuscany as well as Florence, cementing his position further by marrying Eleonora di Toledo, daughter of a powerful Spanish nobleman resident in the city.
With Cosimo established, Maria settled into the role of devoted grandmother at the Villa di Castello, Cosimo’s country residence outside Florence, where she oversaw the nursery for his children — eventually eleven in number. She also cared for his illegitimate daughter, Bia, alongside Giulia de’ Medici, the illegitimate daughter of the murdered Alessandro, who was of similar age.
Tragedy struck in 1542, when Bia died of a virulent infection at just five years old. Maria, heartbroken, died a year later herself, aged only 44.
A dynasty that reached two thrones
Cosimo went on to rule Florence until 1569 and Tuscany until his death in 1574. His son, Francesco I de’ Medici, married Johanna of Austria, and their daughter, Marie de’ Medici, married Henry IV of France — becoming the mother of Louis XIII of France and of Henrietta Maria of France.
Louis XIII was in turn the father of Louis XIV, while Henrietta Maria became the mother of two English kings, Charles II and James II — carrying Maria Salviati’s bloodline, through her great-great-grandchildren, onto the thrones of both France and England.
