This embassy entrusted by Francesco to the Count Mario Strozzi of Santafiora, was received with every possible demonstration of respect and satisfaction by the Venetians. Santafiora was escorted into the city with public honours. Forty senators were deputed to wait on him in the name of the Republic. The Cappello palace was assigned to him as a residence, and he was received at the door of it by the Patriarch of Aquileia, the greatest man of the family connection. Bianca's father and brother were made cavalieri, dubbed "illustrissimi," and entitled to precedence over all other members of the order. In the gala doings which accompanied these events the Queen of the Adriatic outdid herself, we are told, in feasts and magnificence.[187] By a unanimous vote of the Senate on the 16th of June, in consideration of "the Grand Duke of Tuscany having chosen for his wife Bianca Cappello, of a most noble family in this city, a lady adorned with all those most excellent and singular qualities, which make her most worthy of any the highest fortune, it is ordered that she be created a true and particular daughter of the Republic."[188] The same decree orders a golden chain of the value of a thousand dollars to be given to Francesco's ambassador. Moreover, all unpleasant memorials of the time before the lady's most excellent and signal qualities had been discovered, were ordered, as we have seen, to be erased from the public registers.
It is difficult to understand all this excessive avidity of toad–eating servility and flunkeyism in such a body as the Venetian senate. But a few months previously they had manifested a very different tone of feeling on the subject of Bianca's connection with the Grand Duke, superior alike to any sentiments to be found among the Florentine nobles, and to these their own subsequent acts. For we read in a MS. chronicle of the time by Francesco Molino, cited by Cigogna,[189] that Bartolommeo Cappello, her father, having purchased the magnificent palace De' Trivigiani with money received from his daughter, was so ill–looked on in Venice in consequence, that he was solely on this account excluded from the senate; "inasmuch as it was thought that the connection of that family with the Prince Francesco arose from a base and disgraceful cause; and that though it might be profitable, and might, perhaps, be deemed honourable for others, it was not so for a Venetian gentleman."