Francesco Sassetti was an Italian banker.

Biography

He was born in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, the youngest son of Tommaso Sassetti. He is first recorded as joining the famous Medici bank

Medici bank

The Medici Bank was a financial institution created by the Medici family in Italy during the 15th century. It was the largest and most respected bank in Europe during its prime. There are some estimates that the Medici family was, for a period of time, the wealthiest family in Europe...

 in either 1438 or 1439 (at seventeen or eighteen years of age) as a factor to the Avignon

Avignon

Avignon is a French commune in southeastern France in the départment of the Vaucluse bordered by the left bank of the Rhône river. Of the 94,787 inhabitants of the city on 1 January 2010, 12 000 live in the ancient town centre surrounded by its medieval ramparts.Often referred to as the...

 branch, employed by Cosimo de' Medici

Cosimo de' Medici

Còsimo di Giovanni degli Mèdici was the first of the Medici political dynasty, de facto rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance; also known as "Cosimo 'the Elder'" and "Cosimo Pater Patriae" .-Biography:Born in Florence, Cosimo inherited both his wealth and his expertise in...

. His rise was remarkably quick, and he became a junior partner in that branch, and then its general manager, investing his own money in the branch and receiving a share of the profits. By 1453, he had been transferred to the Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

 branch (which as before, he invested in - though he maintained his investment in the Avignon branch)), and in 1458 had returned home to Florence to a position as an adviser to Piero

Piero di Cosimo de' Medici

Piero di Cosimo de' Medici , , was the de facto ruler of Florence from 1464 to 1469, during the Italian Renaissance. He was the father of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano de' Medici-Biography:Piero was born in Florence, the son of Cosimo de' Medici the Elder and Contessina de' Bardi...

 and Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poets...

 (who had succeeded Cosimo); he also married. Some time after this, he was raised to the highest position in the Medici bank available to non-Medici: "General manager" (and was referred to by Lorenzo as nostro ministro).

Among other things, Sassetti is vital to studies of the Medici bank because of some surviving documents kept by him: his "secret account book" or libro segreto, is a private set of account books that Sassetti meticulously kept between 1462 and 1472. They are invaluable for their full and honest statements of Sassetti's finances and for the light they shed on the internal workings of the bank when he was the general manager. They also are interesting in showing how Sassetti made liberal use of interest-bearing deposits and reinvested his earnings from the Medici branches in other enterprises.

Sassetti is often figured in the ultimate decline of the Medici bank. An early sign of the decline was the near-failure of the Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

 branch because of its manager's venality, which Sassetti saved - but as general manager, he should have been suspicious of the high profits the branch manager responsible (Lionetto de' Rossi) reported and checked the books before events had come to such a pass, especially since he was a partner in that branch, even if he was not in the others.

"It was his duty to control the local managers, to audit their accounts, and to lay down the rules which they were expected to follow...Careless managers were reprimanded and summoned to Florence to report. Sassetti, it seems, changed this policy and gave much more leeway to the managers of the affiliated companies."

Sassetti is even more culpable in the failure of the Bruges

Bruges

Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country....

 branch. He consistently overruled Angelo Tani, who opposed the branch manager Tommaso Portinari's reckless schemes, and even removed the last checks against Portinari lending excessive amounts to secular rulers, which would be a direct cause of the failure of the Bruges branch, which failed so spectacularly that the long-term viability of the Medici branch was damaged.

De Roover detects in the accounting methods of the libro segreto a growing distraction by Sassetti, who was increasingly interested in secular humanist

Secular humanism

Secular Humanism, alternatively known as Humanism , is a secular philosophy that embraces human reason, ethics, justice, and the search for human fulfillment...

 activities like collecting books and constructing the Sassetti Chapel

Sassetti Chapel

The Sassetti Chapel is a chapel in the basilica of Santa Trinita in Florence, Italy. It is especially notable for its frescoes of the Stories of St. Francis, considered Domenico Ghirlandaio's masterwork.-History:...

- much like his boss, Lorenzo the Magnificent.