BENEDETTO

VARCHI (1502-1565)  , Florentine historian . He fought in the defence of Florence during the siege by the Mediceans and imperialists in 1530, and was exiled after the surrender of the city . In 1536 he took part in Piero Strozzi's unsuccessful expedition against Medicean rule, but seven years later he was called back to Florence by Cosimo I., who gave him a pension and commissioned him to write a history of the city; the work covers the period from 1527 to 1538 . Varchi also wrote a number of plays, poems, dialogues and translations from the classics . His history, in sixteen books, was first published in Florence in 1721 .