Note 167 — Chapter III · THE TUSCAN LINK

There was a Diotisalvi, a Judge at Pisa in the year 1224, and a Diotisalvi, son of Bentivenga, is mentioned in a deed executed in 1250, in the Port of Pisa. These may have been some of the architect's distant descendants, but we have no clue as to his ancestors. The name would seem to have been a nickname, and not his baptismal one, for in another round church which he built in Pisa, the Knights Templars' church of S. Sepolcro, it is engraved, "Hugius operis Fabricator D͞STESALVET nominatur." The author of Lettere Senesi derives the name from the motto of the Petroni family in Siena.