Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475[a] in Caprese near Arezzo, Tuscany.[5] (Today, Caprese is known as Caprese Michelangelo.) For several generations, his family had been small-scale bankers in Florence, but the bank failed, and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, briefly took a government post in Caprese, where Michelangelo was born.[2] At the time of Michelangelos birth, his father was the Judicial administrator of the small town of Caprese and local administrator of Chiusi. Michelangelos mother was Francesca di Neri del Miniato di Siena.[6] The Buonarrotis claimed to descend from the Countess Mathilde of Canossa; this claim remains unproven, but Michelangelo himself believed it.[7] Several months after Michelangelos birth, the family returned to Florence, where Michelangelo was raised. At later times, during his mothers prolonged illness and after her death in 1481, when he was just six years old, Michelangelo lived with a stonecutter and his wife and family in the town of Settignano, where his father owned a marble quarry and a small farm.[6] Giorgio Vasari quotes Michelangelo