From 1400..
The wealth and personality of Niccoluccio Bindi allowed
his son Marco to organize an army, which fought victoriously
at Lucignano against the Aretines. The valour, the ability
and, frankly, the riches displayed by Marco on the battlefield
permitted him to be elected to the government of the Republic.
We are in the last years of the fourteenth century, and
the family must have become quite important since, leaving
its feudal properties in Rapolano behind, at the beginning
of the 1400s the Bindi family moved to Siena to better show
off its power and glory.
The Bindi are successful: Giovanni Bindi, son of Marco and
grandson of Niccoluccio, in 1430 is elected to the new government
of the Signoria, benefiting no doubt from his illustrious
family name. The status of nobility acquired in Siena helps
the Bindi family to intermarry with noble and rich families.
In the mid-1500s Captain Gerolamo Bindi marries Calidonia
Sergardi. They have no children of their own, and decide
to adopt Ottavio Sergardi, son of Calidonia’s brother.
Thus the surname Bindi Sergardi was born. The family continued
on in the only activity which rich and powerful gentlemen
of those ancient times could have: the cultivation of agricultural
lands belonging to the family.
In the mean time, between the end of the
1400s and the beginning of the 1500s, the Bindi Sergardi
family acquired a beautiful new “palazzo” in
Siena, in via dei Pellegrini, just a few metres from Piazza
del Campo and not much further from the splendid Cathedral.
That property, still part of the family holdings, contains
a room with a vaulted ceiling frescoed by Domenico BECCAFUMI
which represents the pride and joy of the successive generations
of the Bindi Sergardi family, proud to share the fresco
with art-loving friends.
