Peruzzi

The Peruzzi were a Florentine banking family whose ancestors are traced to the mid-eleventh century. Their fortune grew from the wool trade, then grain dealing and finance. By the 1330s their company was Europe's second-largest bank, with fifteen branches stretching from London to the Aegean.

Popes, nobles, towns and abbeys borrowed from them, and their courier network doubled as a diplomatic intelligence service. In Florence they patronised Giotto's frescoes in their Santa Croce chapel from 1313.

Loans of 600,000 florins to Edward III of England, the Lucchese war, the Hundred Years' War and the Flemish revolt ruined the consortium. It collapsed in 1343 and was declared bankrupt in 1345 alongside the Bardi, but the family kept its place among Florence's leading patrician houses.