In connexion with the natural history society there is a valuable museum, and the scientific institute possesses a large library and a rich collection of antiquities, coins and articles of virtu.
The latter, a man of inferior ability and daring, sold Pisa to the count of Virtu, receiving in exchange 200,000 florins, Piombino, and the islands of Elba, Pianosa and Monte Cristo.
But he had virtu as well as fortuna; and on his tombstone it was written that he was "a second Judas Maccabaeus, whom Kedar and Egypt, Dan and Damascus dreaded."
In 1369 Lucca was taken from them by the emperor Charles IV.; and afterwards Giovan Galeazzo Visconti, known as the count of Virtu, determined to forward his ambitious designs upon the whole of Italy by wresting Pisa from the Gambacorti.
