Benci

Palazzo Benci stands in the street of the same name, in the past called "Corso degli Alberti". As reported by Vasari, it was here that Amerigo Benci kept for years the Adoration of the Magi, commissioned of Leonardo by the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto and remained unfinished in 1482.
The same Amerigo Benci, in the 1490s, had commissioned Leonardo to paint a portrait, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, of his daughter Ginevra, who in 1474 had married Luigi di Bernardo Nicolini and in 1475 had engaged in literary correspondence with Bernardo Bembo.
According to a tradition, the painting (or at least the lower part that had been cut off, with the hands) was long kept in Palazzo Pucci before entering the collections of the Prince of Lichtenstein. In the Codices Arundel and Atlanticus and in Ms. L, dating from around 1478 and the first years of the 16th century, Leonardo mentions among his companions a certain Giovanni di Amerigo Benci; specifically, he recalls him in some memorandums on a «book» (not more clearly specified but that could be the Codex Laurenziano De medicina veterinaria [Concerning veterinary medicine] by Giovanni Ruffo), with a «world map» and «my book and on jaspers». All interesting traces calling for further study.