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.