Public Family Trees/Medici/Cosimo II de' Medici
1590 - 1621 · Male · Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Son of Ferdinando I de' Medici and Christina of Lorraine
9
Generation
19
Ancestors
4
Descendants
1
Children
1
Marriages
Cosimo II de' Medici (1590-1621), son of Ferdinando I and Christina of Lorraine, became the fourth Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1609. Chronically ill for much of his short reign, he nonetheless left a significant mark as the patron of Galileo Galilei, who had tutored him as a boy and was later appointed court mathematician and philosopher; Galileo named the four moons of Jupiter he discovered the 'Medicean Stars' in Cosi…
Born1590
Born to Ferdinando I de' Medici, Christina of Lorraine.
Family
A partnership that connects two branches of the Medici family.
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Medici family.
Died1621
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 1 · 1360 - 1429
Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici (1360-1429) was a Florentine banker who founded the Medici Bank around 1397, building it into one of the largest and most respected financial institutions in Europe through careful management and close ties to the papacy. He avoided the ostentation of rival families, cultivated a reputation for civic modesty, and served in senior offices of the Florentine republic without seeking overt political dominance. His sons Cosimo and Lorenzo the Elder inherited both the bank and its fortune, and it was Cosimo who transformed the family's wealth into lasting political power. Giovanni is regarded as the founder of the Medici dynasty, laying the financial foundation on which four centuries of Medici influence in Florence and beyond were built.
Gen 2 · 1389 - 1464
Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464), known as Cosimo the Elder and later honored as Pater Patriae ('Father of the Fatherland'), transformed his father Giovanni di Bicci's banking fortune into effective political control of the Republic of Florence. Though he held no formal title beyond ordinary republican offices, he dominated the city's government from behind the scenes for three decades through alliances, patronage, and careful management of public opinion. A discerning patron of the arts and humanist learning, he funded Brunelleschi's architecture and Donatello's sculpture, and built the Medici Bank into the most powerful financial institution in Europe. His grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent would later be seen as completing the political and cultural project Cosimo began.
Gen 2 · 1395 - 1440
Lorenzo de' Medici (1395-1440), called Lorenzo the Elder to distinguish him from his more famous great-nephew, was the younger son of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici and the brother of Cosimo de' Medici. He worked alongside Cosimo in the family bank but did not seek the same political prominence in Florence. His son Pierfrancesco de' Medici founded what became known as the 'Popolano' or junior branch of the family, a line that later produced Giovanni dalle Bande Nere and, through him, Cosimo I, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. Though less celebrated than his brother's descendants, Lorenzo the Elder's branch ultimately inherited rule over Florence when the senior line failed.
Gen 3 · 1416 - 1469
Piero di Cosimo de' Medici (1416-1469), known as Piero the Gouty for the severe arthritis that afflicted him, was the son of Cosimo de' Medici and Contessina de' Bardi and led Florence for five years after his father's death in 1464. Despite chronic illness that often confined him to bed, he survived a conspiracy against Medici rule in 1466 and preserved the family's dominant position in the city. He married Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a poet in her own right, and together they raised Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano de' Medici, ensuring a smooth succession of Medici leadership. He was also a discerning collector who continued his father's patronage of Florentine artists.
Gen 3 · 1430 - 1476
Pierfrancesco de' Medici (1430-1476) was the son of Lorenzo de' Medici the Elder and grandson of Giovanni di Bicci, heading the junior, 'Popolano' branch of the family descended from Cosimo the Elder's brother. He and his branch held a significant share of the family bank's capital but, unlike his cousins descended from Cosimo, largely stayed out of the front rank of Florentine politics during his lifetime. His two sons, Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco, both called 'il Popolano', continued the branch; Giovanni's marriage to Caterina Sforza produced Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, whose own son Cosimo I would eventually inherit rule over Florence after the senior Medici line died out in the sixteenth century.
Gen 4 · 1449 - 1492
Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, was the de facto ruler of Florence from 1469 until his death and is the figure most closely associated with the Medici name. Grandson of Cosimo de' Medici and son of Piero the Gouty and Lucrezia Tornabuoni, he survived the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, in which his brother Giuliano was murdered, and went on to steer Florence through decades of shifting Italian alliances with considerable diplomatic skill. An accomplished poet himself, he was the leading patron of the High Renaissance, supporting Michelangelo, Botticelli, and the Platonic Academy of Marsilio Ficino. His sons included Pope Leo X and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and his granddaughter was Catherine de' Medici, future queen of France.
Gen 4 · 1453 - 1478
Giuliano de' Medici (1453-1478) was the younger brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent and co-ruler of Florence alongside him. On 26 April 1478 he was stabbed to death in Florence Cathedral during the Pazzi conspiracy, a plot by the rival Pazzi family and allies within the papacy to overthrow Medici rule; Lorenzo survived a simultaneous attack and moved swiftly to suppress the conspirators. Giuliano was admired for his athleticism and courtly manner and was celebrated in Renaissance poetry, including works by Poliziano. Shortly after his death, a son, Giulio de' Medici, was born to his mistress; Giulio was raised within the Medici household and later became Pope Clement VII.
Gen 5 · 1472 - 1503
Piero de' Medici (1472-1503), called Piero the Unfortunate, succeeded his father Lorenzo the Magnificent as head of the family in 1492 but lacked his father's political skill. Facing the French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII in 1494, he agreed to humiliating terms that ceded Florentine fortresses without consulting the city's government, provoking a popular uprising that expelled the Medici from Florence. He spent the rest of his life in exile attempting unsuccessfully to regain power, and died in 1503 during a military campaign in southern Italy, having never recaptured Florence. His son Lorenzo II, Duke of Urbino, later restored the family to power, and his granddaughter was Catherine de' Medici.
Gen 5 · 1475 - 1521
Giovanni de' Medici (1475-1521) was the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, made a cardinal in his teens through his father's influence with the papacy, and elected Pope Leo X in 1513, becoming the first Medici pope. His pontificate was marked by lavish patronage of art and architecture in Rome, continuing the Medici tradition of cultural sponsorship, but also by the sale of indulgences that helped provoke Martin Luther's protest in 1517 and the start of the Protestant Reformation. He restored Medici rule in Florence after the family's earlier expulsion and used his position to advance Medici family interests across Italy. He died in 1521 without legitimate children, and his cousin Giulio later became Pope Clement VII.
Gen 6 · 1492 - 1519
Lorenzo de' Medici (1492-1519), grandson and namesake of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was made Duke of Urbino in 1516 by his uncle Pope Leo X after a campaign to seize the duchy from its ruling family. He governed Florence on behalf of the Medici papacy and married Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, a French noblewoman, in 1518. Both parents died within weeks of each other in 1519, shortly after the birth of their only child, Catherine de' Medici, who was raised as a ward of the family and later became queen of France. Niccolo Machiavelli dedicated The Prince to Lorenzo, though the two are not known to have had a close relationship. He is traditionally identified as the father of Alessandro de' Medici, first Duke of Florence.
Gen 6 · 1498 - 1526
Giovanni de' Medici (1498-1526), known as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere ('of the Black Bands') for the black mourning insignia his troops adopted after Pope Leo X's death, was born in Forli to Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and Caterina Sforza, the formidable Countess of Forli. He became one of the most celebrated condottieri, or mercenary captains, of the Italian Wars, commanding troops for Florence, the papacy, and various Italian states and earning a reputation as a brilliant, unconventional military tactician. He married Maria Salviati, a granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, uniting the junior and senior branches of the Medici family. He died in 1526 following a military campaign against Imperial forces, leaving an infant son, Cosimo, who would become Grand Duke of Tuscany.
The Belgian royal family, formally the House of Belgium and dynastically a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is the reigning family of Belgium, founded when the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld accepted the throne of the newly independent kingdom in 1831 and continuing today through King Philippe and his heir, Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830 and chose a constitutional monarchy. Its National Congress looked abroad for a sovereign who could balance French and British interests, and settled on Leopold, a widowed, well-connected and famously cautious prince who had already turned down the crown of Greece. He took the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831, still the Belgian national day. Seven monarchs have reigned since: Leopold I, Leopold II, Albert I, Leopold III, Baudouin, Albert II and Philippe. ## Origins The dynasty's roots are in the small Thuringian duchy of Saxe-Coburg, whose princes married into half the thrones of nineteenth-century Europe. Leopold I was the uncle of both Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and his second marriage, to Louise-Marie of Orleans, daughter of the French king Louis Philippe I, tied the new kingdom to Paris as well as London. The crown did not pass in a straight line: Leopold II's only son died at the age of nine, so the succession moved to Leopold II's brother Philippe, Count of Flanders, and then to Philippe's son, Albert I. Every Belgian monarch since 1909 descends from that collateral branch. ## Notable members Leopold II is the most studied and most criticised figure in the family, remembered for the industrial boom and monumental building of his reign and, above all, for his personal rule over the Congo Free State. Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Bavaria became wartime symbols of Belgian resistance behind the Yser in 1914. Leopold III's surrender in 1940 and his conduct under occupation triggered the political crisis known as the Royal Question and ended in his abdication. Baudouin reigned for 42 years and presided over Congolese independence and Belgium's transformation into a federal state. Daughters of the house carried its blood outward: Charlotte became Empress Carlota of Mexico, Marie-Jose was the last Queen of Italy, and Josephine-Charlotte was Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. ## Significance In a country divided by language, the monarchy has been the one institution claimed by both Flemish and Walloon Belgians, and the king's role in brokering coalition governments remains politically real rather than ceremonial. The family has also changed with the country: equal succession was introduced in 1991, making Princess Elisabeth the first female Duchess of Brabant and the future first queen regnant of the Belgians, and in 2020 a court recognised Delphine of Saxe-Coburg as a daughter of Albert II. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Dynasty | House of Belgium (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) | | Country | Kingdom of Belgium | | Founder | Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790-1865) | | Reigning since | 21 July 1831 | | Monarchs to date | Seven, from Leopold I to Philippe | | Current head | King Philippe (born 1960), reigning since 2013 | | Heir apparent | Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (born 2001) | | Principal residences | Royal Palace of Brussels, Castle of Laeken | | Motto | L'union fait la force / Eendracht maakt macht |
The House of Stuart was the royal dynasty that ruled Scotland from 1371 and both Scotland and England from 1603 until 1714, giving Britain fourteen monarchs from Robert II to Queen Anne as well as the Jacobite claimants who carried its cause into exile. Spelled Stewart in Scotland and Stuart after Mary, Queen of Scots adopted the French form, the family holds the unusual distinction of having united two crowns by inheritance rather than conquest, and of ending in a disputed succession that reshaped the British constitution. ## Origins The family took its name from its office. The Stewarts were hereditary High Stewards of Scotland, a post granted in the twelfth century to a Breton house settled in Renfrewshire. In 1315 Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward, married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert the Bruce. Their son became Robert II in 1371 when the direct Bruce line failed, and the stewardship turned into a crown. For more than two centuries afterwards the Stewarts ruled Scotland alone, through a run of reigns cut short by battle, captivity and long royal minorities that left the nobility unusually powerful. ## Notable members James IV, the most cultivated of the Scottish kings, married Margaret Tudor in 1503 and so planted the claim that would carry his descendants to the English throne. His granddaughter Mary, Queen of Scots became queen at six days old, reigned briefly and turbulently, and was deposed in 1567 and executed in England twenty years later. Her son, James VI of Scotland, inherited the English crown in 1603 as James I and became the first monarch to rule both kingdoms. His son Charles I lost the Civil Wars and his throne; Charles II returned at the Restoration in 1660; James II and VII was deposed in the Revolution of 1688, after which his daughters Mary II and Anne reigned in his place. In exile his son James Francis Edward Stuart and grandson Charles Edward Stuart, remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led the Jacobite attempts to recover the throne, ending with the rising of 1745. ## Significance No other British dynasty changed the shape of the state so much. The Stuarts brought Scotland and England under one sovereign, presided over the King James Bible and the theatre of Shakespeare's late career, lost a king to Parliament, and provoked the settlements of 1689 and 1701 that made the monarchy answerable to Parliament and Protestant by statute. When Queen Anne died childless in 1714, the crown passed under the Act of Settlement to the descendants of her cousin Sophia of Hanover, granddaughter of James VI and I, so every British monarch since is still a Stuart descendant. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Robert II, King of Scots from 1371 | | Ruled | Scotland 1371 to 1714; England and Ireland 1603 to 1714 | | Origin | Renfrewshire, Scotland | | Union of the Crowns | 1603, under James VI of Scotland and I of England | | Last reigning monarch | Anne, Queen of Great Britain, died 1714 | | Jacobite claimants | James Francis Edward, Charles Edward and Henry Benedict Stuart | | Succeeded by | The House of Hanover, through Sophia of Hanover |
The House of Hohenzollern is the German dynasty that ruled Brandenburg from 1415, held the Prussian crown from 1701, and gave Germany its three emperors between 1871 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918. This tree follows the senior Prussian line in one unbroken descent, from Frederick William the Great Elector, through the kings of Prussia and the German Emperors, down to Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the present head of the house. ## Origins The family takes its name from Hohenzollern Castle on a hill in the Swabian Alb, where a line of counts is recorded from the eleventh century. A Swabian Zollern married into the burgraviate of Nuremberg in 1192, and the Franconian branch that grew from it spent two centuries accumulating lands and credit with the Holy Roman Emperors. The decisive moment came in 1415, when Emperor Sigismund invested Frederick VI of Nuremberg as Elector of Brandenburg in return for his political and financial support. The Duchy of Prussia, a separate inheritance lying outside the Empire, passed to the Brandenburg electors in 1618, and Frederick William, the Great Elector, welded the two into a single functioning state after the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. ## Notable members Frederick I turned the electorate into a kingdom in 1701. His son Frederick William I, the Soldier King, built the army and the treasury that his own son, **Frederick the Great**, used to seize Silesia and to make Prussia a European power, while also composing music, building Sanssouci and corresponding with Voltaire. **Queen Louise** became the emotional centre of Prussian resistance to Napoleon. **Wilhelm I**, with Otto von Bismarck as his minister president, was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. His son **Frederick III** and the liberal English princess he married, Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria, reigned for only ninety nine days. **Wilhelm II**, the last Kaiser, abdicated in 1918 and died in Dutch exile in 1941. ## Significance No other German family shaped the modern state so directly. Hohenzollern rulers created the Prussian civil service, compulsory schooling and the general staff, sponsored the Berlin academies and the Humboldt university model, and then used Prussian power to unify Germany around themselves. The monarchy ended with the revolution of November 1918, but the house continues as a private family: the headship passed from Wilhelm II to his eldest son, then to Louis Ferdinand, and in 1994 to Georg Friedrich, whose own father and uncles are part of the succession story told in this tree. ## Quick facts | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Family name | Hohenzollern | | Place of origin | Hohenzollern Castle, Swabia, southern Germany | | Ruled | Brandenburg from 1415, Prussia from 1618, Germany from 1871 | | Royal title | King in Prussia from 1701, King of Prussia from 1772 | | Imperial title | German Emperor, 1871 to 1918 | | German Emperors | Wilhelm I, Frederick III, Wilhelm II | | Monarchy ended | 9 November 1918 | | Present head of the house | Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, since 1994 | | Principal residences | Berlin City Palace, Sanssouci and Cecilienhof at Potsdam, Charlottenburg | | Branch shown here | The senior Prussian line only, not Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen |
Cosimo II de' Medici's recorded parents are Ferdinando I de' Medici, Christina of Lorraine.
Cosimo II de' Medici has 1 recorded child: Ferdinando II de' Medici.
Cosimo II de' Medici married Maria Maddalena of Austria.
Cosimo II de' Medici is recorded as Grand Duke of Tuscany in the Medici family tree.
Cosimo II de' Medici's recorded native place is Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
19 ancestors and 4 descendants of Cosimo II de' Medici are recorded so far, within a tree of 41 people.
Cosimo II de' Medici is recorded as Lorenzo de' Medici's 5 steps away.
Cosimo II de' Medici is recorded in the Medici family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 40 other people.
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