Baldassare Suárez de la Concha (1537–1620), born in Segovia, was a wealthy Spanish apothecary who was called to Florence in 1562 [with his parents ?], following Eleonora de Toledo who had become the wife of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, then Grand Duke of Tuscany. Baldassare's father, Pietro di Ferdinando Soares/Suárez de la Concha (d. 1588), was a Coimbra-born gentleman and husband of Francesca López, of Medina del Campo, and his elder brother was the Spanish Jesuit missionary in Mexico Hernando Suárez de la Concha (1528–1608).[3] Baldassare had a brilliant career in Florence and was ennobled as Patrizio di Firenze (Patrician of Florence) and purchased to the Corsini family the Florentine Palazzo della Commenda, the 14th century Palazzo Corsini, then Palazzo Corsini-Suarez in 1590. The Suárez de la Concha patrician family of Florence became extinct in 1799.[4]
