to distract him from the Ruspanti, Violante Beatrice threw banquets, to which she invited the foremost members of Tuscan society. The Grand Duke's behaviour, vomiting, belching and cracking rude jokes, literally sent the guests scrambling to leave. The Electress was more fortunate for her part. She succeeded in making Gian Gastone appear on Saint John the Baptist's day, 1729. However, during the ceremony, the Grand Duke became so intoxicated that he had to be dragged back to his palace, the Pitti, on a litter. Just five months before the arrival of troops on behalf of Gian Gastone's Spanish heir, Violante Beatrice of Bavaria, Dowager Grand Princess of Tuscany, Governor of Siena, died. During the funeral procession, her hearse briefly paused before the Pitti, an action that incensed the Grand Duke, who ordered the hearse to move along in words a contemporary dubbed "unfit for the lowest of harlots, let alone for a gentle high-born princess". The bulk of Violante Beatrice's remains were interred in the Convent of Saint Teresa, Florence; her heart was placed in her husband's coffin in the Medicean necropolis, San Lorenzo. When in 1857 her sarcophagus was re-discovered, it bore the imperial stamp of Napoleon I of France, who had had it moved from the convent to San Lorenzo. On 26 February 1858, she was restored to the convent, brought there in the royal hearse. Ancestors References Citations Bibliography Acton, Harold (1980). The Last Medici. London: Macmillan. . Angesi, M.G. (2005).The Contest for Knowledge: Debates Over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-century Italy. Chicago: Chicago University Press. . Hale, J.R. (1977). Florence and the Medici. London: Orion. . Napier, Edward Henry (1846). Florentine History: from the Earliest Authentic Records to the Accession of Ferdinand the Third: Volume V. London: Moxon. Parsons, Gerald (2004). Siena, Civil Religion and the Sienese. Farnham: Ashgate. . Strathern, Paul (2003). The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance. London: Vintage. . Young, G.F. (1920). The Medici: Volume II. London: John Murray. External links Oil portrait of Violante Beatrice of Bavaria, artist unknown, University of Michigan Museum of Art House of Wittelsbach 17th-century German people 18th-century German people House of Medici 1673 births 1731 deaths Nobility from Munich Duchesses of Bavaria Grand Princesses of Tuscany Governors of Siena Daughters of monarchs