Jacopo Buonaparte was an early member of the Bonaparte

Bonaparte

The House of Bonaparte is an imperial and royal European dynasty founded by Napoleon I of France in 1804, a French military leader who rose to notability out of the French Revolution and transformed the French Republic into the First French Empire within five years of his coup d'état...

 family and a friend and advisor to Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 Pope Clement VII

Pope Clement VII

Clement VII , born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was Pope from 1523 to 1534.-Early life:...

. He is notable for being a non-Roman eyewitness to the sack of Rome

Sack of Rome (1527)

The Sack of Rome on 6 May 1527 was a military event carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, then part of the Papal States...

 on May 6, 1527 where the pope was forced to surrender the Castel Sant' Angelo and pay a ransom for his life. Jacopo's record is one of the most important surviving historical documents of that time.

Prior to this, Pope Clement the VII was Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and the connection between the Buonaparte and Medici family can be traced back to Florence, Italy. The Buonapartes lived in San Miniato

San Miniato

San Miniato is a town and comune in the province of Pisa, in the region of Tuscany, Italy.San Miniato sits at an historically strategic location atop three small hills where it dominates the lower Arno valley between the valleys of Egola and Elsa...

 just outside of Florence, and the Medici family under Cosimo il Vecchio ruled until the 16th century. Jacopo, as stated, was a friend and advisor to one of the most powerful Medicis, the pope, and his brother Benedetto Buonaparte was politically neutral. The relationship between the families was severely strained after two of Jacopo's nephews Pier-Antonio Buonaparte and Giovanni Buonaparte joined the 1527 rebellion against the Medici rule.

Jacopo himself was present at the sack of Rome, recorded the attack, and was saved from death because he was sheltered in the Castel Sant' Angelo with Pope Clement and his forces. After the attack and surrender, Pope Clement allied himself with the German Imperial Army, sacked Florence and banished Pier-Antonio and Giovanni, who were later restored by Alessandro de' Medici.
By this time San Miniato had been annexed by Florence when Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

 finished building his wall around the city. The Buonaparte tomb lies in the Church of San Francesco

Church of San Francesco

The Convent of San Francesco is a church in Lucca, Italy.The presence of Franciscan monks in Lucca was already attested in 1228, and the new religious order had just took a prominent role in city life. The church, built out of gravel, is a single classroom with a trussed roof. It was completed in...

 in San Miniato.

Link to partbooks XIX 164-7 in the Magliabechiano archive

Musicologist Joshua Drake suggests that Jacopo can be linked to four partbooks in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze that consist of 49 Italian, 24 French secular and 13 Latin sacred musical compositions from early composers such as Josquin, Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac

Heinrich Isaac was a Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer of south Netherlandish origin. He wrote masses, motets, songs , and instrumental music. A significant contemporary of Josquin des Prez, Isaac influenced the development of music in Germany...

, Sebastiano Festa

Sebastiano Festa

Sebastiano Festa was an Italian composer of the Renaissance, active mainly in Rome. While his musical output was small, he was one of the earliest composers of madrigals, and was influential on other early composers of madrigals, such as Philippe Verdelot...

 and Bernardo Pisano

Bernardo Pisano

Bernardo Pisano was an Italian composer, priest, singer, and scholar of the Renaissance. He was one of the first madrigalists, and the first composer anywhere to have a printed collection of secular music devoted entirely to himself.- Life :He was born in Florence, and may have spent some time...

. The partbooks have been essential in reconstructing the life of Pisano.

Drake discovered that emblems in the Bassus partbook bore a striking similarity to the Buonaparte family coat of arms and the time period, binding and Florentine script made it plausible that Jacopo could have been the probable owner or compiler of these partbooks.