Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
From 1476 onwards, Lorenzo il Magnifico needed to raise funds, the Pope having seized many of his assets. He borrowed from his cousins, with the eventual result that ownership of the villa was transferred after protracted negotiations to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni in 1485. Cafaggiolo thus passed for a time to the younger branch of the Medici— who established the manufacture of maiolica in the villa's outbuildings— until all the Medici holdings were once more reassembled in the hands of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.