Chapter IV: Part 4

A peasant named Balducci, from Vinci, was the ancestor of the Feroni family. One of his descendants, of the name of Ferone, established himself at Empoli as a dyer, and had dealings with Holland, where his grandson Francesco Feroni made a large fortune. Prince Cosimo de’ Medici made his acquaintance during his travels, and when he became Grand Duke summoned him to Florence, made him a citizen and a Senator, and in 1681 Marquess of Bellavista. He left an enormous fortune to his descendants, one of whom bought several houses in Via de’ Serragli, and built this large palace, which the Marquess Ubaldo Feroni enlarged in 1778. It was afterwards again considerably augmented by the addition of the suppressed church and monastery of S. Giuseppe, when another entrance into the spacious courtyard was made from Via S. Frediano. In the same year his brother the Marquess Alessandro bought the larger half of the ancient Palazzo Spini, which is sometimes called Feroni. In another palace in the Via Faenza they had a gallery of pictures, which the last of the family bequeathed to the city of Florence in 1850.

PALAZZO RICASOLI FIRIDOLFI

_Via Maggio. No. 7._

The fine palace now inhabited by the Baroness Ricasoli Firidolfi and her children was built by the Ridolfi family on the site of houses belonging to various families, in the XVth century, and bought in 1736 by Maria Lucrezia Firidolfi for her sons. The architect is unknown, but the palace, with its fine courtyard, evidently dates from the XVth century. On the first floor is a tiny chapel, entirely painted in oils by Giorgio Vasari in a manner very different from his usual style. Above the altar is a marble bas-relief of the Madonna and Child with S. John, by Rossellini.

The history of this family is a complicated and a curious one. Divided in the XIIth century into three branches, of which one retained the old name of Firidolfi, whilst the other two took that of Ricasoli, they were again reunited after eight hundred years in the person of the late Baron Giovanni Ricasoli Firidolfi. His mother was the only daughter of the great statesman Baron Bettino Ricasoli, his father the sole surviving son of Giovanni Francesco Ricasoli di Meleto, who married the only daughter of the last of the Firidolfi, whose name he added to his own.

One of those long-bearded northmen (Longobardi), who came into Italy in the VIth century, is said to have settled in the Mugello. But the first of the family of whom we have documentary evidence is Geremia, son of Ildebrando, lord of great estates in the Mugello and of nearly the whole province of the Chianti, who being old, and without children, made large donations to the Church. On the death of his first wife he married a young girl, by whom he had one son, Ridolfo, inscribed among the great Barons of Tuscany in a deed of 1029. From him the family took the name of Firidolfi (de filiis Rudolphi). Ranieri Firidolfi fought under Frederick Barbarossa, and obtained in fief the castles of Campi and of Tornano, and, according to a tradition in the family, the strong castle of Brolio. This originally belonged to Bonifazio, Marquess of Tuscany, who in 1009 gave it to the monks of the Badia of Florence, a donation confirmed by the Emperor Henry II. in 1012, and by Henry IV. in 1074. Henry VI. not only confirmed his father’s gifts to Ranieri, but added to them the castles of Moriano and of Ricasoli, not far from Fiesole, from which the most powerful branch of the family took its name.

Alberto Ricasoli, Ranieri’s son, served under the Emperor Otho IV., who increased the privileges bestowed by former emperors, and in 1230 he was elected Podestà of Siena. From his sons Ranieri and Ugo descended the Ricasoli di Meleto of Ponte alla Carraja, and the great baronial family. Ugo fought in the Guelph ranks at Montaperti, and in revenge the Ghibellines destroyed his castle of Ricasoli, for which he obtained compensation when his party returned to power. Bindaccio, his grandson, showed such valour at the battles of Montecatini and Altopascio that the Bolognese chose him as their Podestà, and Cardinal Albornoz made him Captain-General of the Papal forces. One of his sons was a Bishop of Florence, whilst another, Albertaccio, was so gallant a soldier that at his death in 1335 the Republic gave him a public funeral, and decreed that his arms, with the banner of the people and of the Guelph party, should be placed above his tomb in Sta. Croce.

Ranieri Ricasoli di Meleto, a strong partisan of the Medici, was sent to Flanders after the Pazzi conspiracy to sequester the monies in their banks in Bruges, Ghent, etc. He was a very rich merchant, and built the stately old Ricasoli palace on the Lung’Arno Corsini in 1480, said to have been designed by Michelozzi (now the Hotel New York). Cinelli describes the fine collection of pictures, and the beautiful garden and loggia opposite (where now is the Hotel Bristol), then connected with the palace by a passage under the street.[33] One of Ranieri’s descendants was an intimate friend of Alfieri, whose tragedy Saul was first acted in the private theatre of the Ricasoli palace.

Simone Ricasoli, son of Ranieri, was brought up with Lorenzo the Magnificent, and when the young Cardinal Giovanni, his son, went to Rome, Lorenzo confided him to the care of his devoted friend. On Giovanni becoming Pope as Leo X., he summoned another Ricasoli, Antonio, to direct the iniquitous war which despoiled the Della Rovere of the Duchy of Urbino in favour of his own nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici. The assault and capture of the strong fortress of S. Leo was famous in the annals of that time. In 1526 he was Commissary of the war with Siena, and the defeat of the Florentine troops was attributed to him; so on the exile of the Medici the following year he was condemned to death and his estates were forfeited. He escaped to Rome, and found an asylum with Clement VII. until Florence was once more ruled by the Medici, when he was created a Senator. After the battle of Montemurlo he sat as one of the judges, and was distinguished for the harsh brutality of his sentences on the wretched prisoners. His sons served Cosimo I. well by sowing discord in Siena, and when the city fell into the hands of the Duke he rewarded Giulio Ricasoli by restoring to him the old feudal castles of Trappola, Rocca Guicciarda and Sagona, which the Florentine Republic had confiscated in 1395. Giulio then reassumed the old title of Baron, which his ancestors had refused to exchange for the higher one of Count. The name of Ricasoli is connected with the island of Malta, as Giovanfrancesco, a knight of the Order, gave such large sums towards building the fortifications that one of the forts was named after him.[34]

The life of Bettino Ricasoli, one of the makers of United Italy, is too well known to need repetition here, and would take up too much space. “Il fiero Barone” (the proud, or great, Baron), as the Florentines called him (he was, I believe, the only Baron of Tuscany), died in an old family palace in the Via del Cocomero, now, according to the baneful habit they have in Florence of altering the names of ancient streets, and thus sweeping away the historical landmarks of the city, the Via Ricasoli.

PALAZZO FOSSI

_Via de’ Benci. No. 20._

Nearly all the palaces on the eastern side of Via de’ Benci once belonged to the Alberti and the street was called after them, until the Benci crossed the Arno and established themselves here, when it became Via de’ Benci. This palace was bought from Francesco degl’Alberti in 1456 by Duccio Mellini, whose family were rich bankers and great patrons of the arts. The fine pulpit in Sta. Croce by Benedetto da Majano was erected by them. Michelangelo has been named as the architect of the characteristic and elegant palace, but it bears no resemblance to his handiwork, and evidently dates from the middle of the XVIth century. It is one of the few which still preserves, though in a sad state of ruin, a frescoed façade, painted by Stalf, a Flemish artist, after the designs of Francesco Salviati. The Mellini sold it in 1634, since when it has changed hands often, and now belongs to Signor Fossi.

PALAZZO FRESCOBALDI

_Piazza de’ Frescobaldi. No. 1._

Many were the houses belonging to the great family of Frescobaldi in the Borgo S. Jacopo and in the Via S. Spirito, besides the great palace in the Piazza de’ Frescobaldi. Opposite to the latter stood one of their towers and their loggia, of which a capital remains built into the wall of a small house. Another tower was near the church of S. Jacopo. The old palace in the Piazza in which Pope Gregory lodged in 1272 was burnt during the popular rising in 1343, but was rebuilt with greater magnificence. Afterwards it became a monastery, but when Florence became the capital the monks gave place to the Admiralty. It is now a communal school, and the fine façade is fast falling to pieces.

According to Verino, the Frescobaldi came originally from Germany. They were lords of several castles in the Val di Pesa in very early times, and their name appears among the first Consuls and Elders of Florence. One of them, Messer Lamberto di Fresco di Baldo, built the first bridge (of wood) of Sta. Trinita across the Arno in 1252. His sons Lapo and Neri fought at the battle of Montaperti on the side of the Guelphs, and their cousin Berto rode by the side of King Charles of Anjou and bore his banner at the famous battle of Campaldino in 1282. Three years later Ghino de’ Frescobaldi was created a Prior, but the power, military fame and riches, of the family aroused the jealousy of the popular party. As _Grandi_ they were declared incapable of holding any office, which they bitterly resented; and were driven to fury by the exile of Teglia de’ Frescobaldi, who had led the Florentine army to victory in 1303, and was too popular with his soldiers to please a republican government. Swearing to be revenged, he took service with Castruccio Castrocane, Lord of Lucca, and attempted to seize Montelupo and Capraja, while some of his relatives conspired to open the gates of Florence to her enemy. All those who were implicated in the plot were banished, and the cruelty and injustice of the newly created magistrate, “the Preserver of Peace,” drove the _Grandi_ to desperation, and ended in the revolt of the great Oltrarno families, so graphically described by Villani (see p. 40). For some hours the Frescobaldi defended their Piazza and palaces, but were at last forced to capitulate. Their houses and towers were destroyed, and those members of the family who were not beheaded or imprisoned, were banished.

There must also be mentioned the poet Dino de’ Frescobaldi, called by Boccaccio “famosissimo dicitore in rima in Firenze.” The world owes him a vast debt of gratitude, for he contrived to save the first seven cantos of the _Inferno_, when all that belonged to his friend Dante was confiscated, and sent them after him to the Marchese Malaspina’s castle in the Lunigiana. Matteo, Dino’s son, was also a poet, and Lionardo, whose interesting account of his travels in Egypt and the Holy Land in 1383 has been published, was, it is believed, a descendant of his.

Battista de’ Frescobaldi conspired against Lorenzo the Magnificent and was beheaded, and his brother Giuliano died by the side of Ferruccio Ferrucci in the battle of Gavinana. Bartolomeo was so ardent a republican that he withdrew from the world when the Medici attained to power, but his descendant Matteo was made a Senator in 1645. The present representative of the Frescobaldi lives in one of the old family palaces in Via S. Spirito.

PALAZZO GHERADESCA

_Borgo Pinti. No. 93._

The historian Bartolommeo Scala, son of a miller of Colle in the Val d’Elsa, built this palace. Cosimo de’ Medici, and his son Piero after him, paid for his education, and he became Chancellor of the Republic of Florence and was Gonfalonier of Justice in 1486. His learning was undeniable, but Lorenzo the Magnificent evidently was not satisfied with his Latin style, as he privately made Poliziano correct the despatches and letters written by Scala in the name of the Republic. At length the Chancellor suspected who was the real author of the corrections and a deadly hatred ensued between the two men. The hatred was embittered by the refusal of Scala’s beautiful and clever daughter Alessandra to listen to Poliziano, and by her marriage with Michael Tarcagnota, an inferior poet, but a better-tempered and a better-looking man than the famous Agnolo Poliziano.

Guido Scala, Bartolommeo’s grandson, died childless in 1581 and left the palace to Alessandro de’ Medici, Archbishop of Florence, afterwards Pope Leo XI. It then became the property of the Counts Gheradesca who laid out a beautiful garden and now it belongs to the Meridionale Railway Company.

PALAZZO GIANFIGLIAZZI

_Via Tornabuoni. No. 1._

The palace, or rather the palaces, of the great family of the Gianfigliazzi faced the Ponte a Sta. Trinita at the corner of the Lung’Arno Corsini and the Via Tornabuoni. As Guelphs they were expelled the city after the battle of Montaperti in 1260, but returned, and three of them signed the famous peace of 1280. Eight years later their palaces were nearly destroyed by the terrible flood which did so much damage in Florence. The palaces Nos. 2 and 4 on the Lung’Arno Corsini also belonged to them; in the former, with the lion of the Gianfigliazzi carved by Desiderio da Settignano in the coat of arms on the façade, the great poet Alfieri lived for some time, and there he died.

At the beginning of the XVth century they bought from the Fastelli the palace adjoining the church of Sta. Trinita, with a tower which had been built by the Ruggerini, a Guelph family who were ruined in 1260. The arms of the three different owners are still on the façade. The loggia of the Gianfigliazzi, on the opposite side of the church at the corner of the Via di Parione, was only closed and turned into a shop in 1732.

The Gianfigliazzi descend from a Giovanni son of Azzo (Gianni figlio d’Azzo), who signed a convention with Siena in 1201. Two of the family sat in the Council of Elders in 1278 and 1279; a few years later they were excluded from office as nobles and their name only appears again among the magistrates of the city after the departure of the tyrant Duke of Athens. Geri de’ Gianfigliazzi was a poet and a friend of Petrarch; Rinaldo, sent as Commissary of War against Visconti, was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire by the Emperor Robert in 1402; and Bongianni, another gallant soldier, was publicly knighted by the Signoria in 1467 and died at the head of his troops under the walls of Pietrasanta. His son Jacopo was one of the twelve citizens named by Clement VII. to “reform” the State and elect Alessandro de’ Medici absolute ruler of Florence. Several of the family were Senators under the Medici, until the family became extinct in 1764.

PALAZZO GINORI

_Via de’ Ginori. No. 2._

The Ginori palace once belonged to Bacio Bandinelli who died there in 1559. There is a fine courtyard and the large saloon on the first floor is handsome; the building has been restored but not much spoiled. The Ginori descend from a notary who came to Florence from Calenzano, in the Val di Marino, in 1304, and lived close to the present palace of his descendants. His son Gino was the first of twenty-six Priors of the family and from him they took their name. Piero his grandson, the first Gonfalonier of five of his house in 1423, was an important person in the city and a friend of Giovanni de’ Medici, with whom he contributed towards the building of S. Lorenzo.

Benvenuto Cellini tells us that for Federigo Ginori, “a young man of a very lofty spirit,” he made a medal “with Atlas bearing the world upon his shoulders, and applied to Michelangelo for a design. Michelangelo made this answer: ‘Go and find out a young goldsmith named Benvenuto; he will serve you admirably, and certainly he does not stand in need of sketches by me. However to prevent your thinking that I want to save myself the trouble of so slight a matter, I will gladly sketch you something; but meanwhile speak to Benvenuto, and let him make a model, he can then execute the better of the two designs.’ Federigo Ginori came to me, and told me what he wanted, adding thereto how Michelangelo had praised me, and how he had suggested I should make a waxen model while he undertook to supply a sketch. The words of that great man so heartened me, that I set to work at once with eagerness ... and when Michelangelo saw it, he praised it to the skies. This was a figure, as I have said, chiselled on a plate of gold; Atlas had the heaven upon his back, made out of a crystal ball, engraved with the zodiac upon a field of lapis-lazuli. The whole composition produced an indescribably fine effect; and under it ran the legend _Summa tulisse juvat_.”[35] Federigo was killed during the siege of Florence and his brother Leonardo, a spendthrift and a gambler, was the husband of the beautiful Caterina Soderini, whose story is a sad one. Forced by her father to forget her early love the poet Luigi Alamanni, and married to Leonardo Ginori, who had to fly to Naples to escape from his creditors, she was exposed to the persecutions of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, and was the innocent cause of his murder (see p. 263). Her son Bartolommeo, famed for his strength and great stature, was chosen by Giovan Bologna for the model of the young man in his group of the rape of the Sabines. From him descended the Senator Carlo Ginori who founded the well-known china manufactory at Doccia near Florence in 1740. He chartered a ship for China and she brought back, not only models and specimens of the various earths used in making china, but many rare plants and the first gold fish that were seen in Europe.[36] The present Marquess Ginori lives in the old palace, and the Doccia factory, which has become a Company under the name of Richard Ginori, still keeps up its reputation.

PALAZZO GINORI CONTI

_Via Cavour. No. 7._

From the Riccardi palace to Via Guelfa nearly all the houses once belonged to various members of the Medici family, who migrated from their original dwellings in the centre of Florence to settle near S. Lorenzo, and in this palace, often mentioned as “la casa vecchia” (the old house), Cosimo the Elder was born. In those days the upper storeys of most of the buildings projected over the street, supported on brackets of stone or of wood, until in 1536 peremptory orders were given to demolish all the over-hanging façades in Via Larga and to rebuild them straight up from the ground floor, for the entrance into the city of Margarita of Austria, the bride of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici. The house was sold by Ferdinando II. to the Ughi, and after changing hands several times was bought by Giovacchino Rossini, to whose memory an inscription was placed on the front of the house. It now belongs to Prince Ginori Conti.

The often repeated story that Lorenzino de’ Medici’s house was destroyed and a street, called the Chiasso del Traditore, made where it stood, is entirely opposed to all documentary evidence. In 1537 Lorenzino was condemned as a traitor and according to old custom the front of his house, or rather of the room in which he murdered his cousin Alessandro, was torn down. In 1568, 1604 and 1611, when the “old house” and that of Lorenzino passed from one member of the Medici family to another, the latter is always mentioned as “partly destroyed.” When the two houses were sold to Alamanno Ughi in 1646 the description runs: “a large house in Via Larga, with the destroyed part adjoining the said house and the rooms which are in the said destroyed part.” The new proprietor let the ground floor “under the ruined part of the small house” as a shop in 1648, but fifty years later the shop was turned into stables. It was only in 1736, as we learn from the _Diario_ of Settimanni, that “Ughi finished restoring his house in Via Larga adjoining the palace of the Marchese Cosimo Riccardi. This was the house which belonged to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who exactly two hundred years ago murdered the Duke Alessandro.... Until this restoration the hole, over sixteen braccie wide, which had been made in the front of the house was to be seen.” There is no mention of any street, nor of any prohibition as to building on the site of the house in which the murder had been committed. Signor Corrazzini however states that Ughi, having heard a rumour that some such prohibition existed, petitioned the Grand Duke to affirm that he and his heirs were at liberty to build on the site as they pleased, and this Ferdinando did.[37] The house is No. 5. Via Cavour, with three windows, wedged in between the Palazzo Riccardi and the palace of Prince Ginori Conti.

PALAZZO GINORI-VENTURI

_Via della Scala. No. 89._

This palace was built by Bernardo Rucellai on the site of an old leper hospital, and annexed to it were the celebrated Oricellari gardens, meeting place of the Platonic Academy founded by Cosimo the Elder. Vasari states that Leon Battista Alberti “designed the house and the garden of the Rucellai in Via della Scala, the house is built with great knowledge and is most convenient, having among other things two loggie, one to the south, the other to the west, both are beautiful.” But Vasari is wrong, as the gardens were bought and the house was built in 1482, two years after the death of Alberti. In these gardens Machiavelli read aloud his _Discourses_ on the First Decade of Livy to the assembled academicians, and Giovanni Rucellai’s _Rosmunda_ was acted before Leo X. on his first visit to Florence after his election as pope. When the conspiracy against the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici was discovered, in which Machiavelli was implicated, and which cost two of the members their lives, the Academy was suppressed. The palace and the gardens were confiscated by the Medici in 1527, but given back to the Rucellai four years later by the Duke Alessandro. In 1537 Palla Rucellai was despoiled of all his possessions for opposing the election of Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, to the throne. Palace and gardens then became the abode, first of Eleonora degl’Albizzi, mistress of Cosimo I., and afterwards of Bianca Cappello, the account of whose wonderful entertainment to the Grand Duke Francesco I., her lover, is curious reading.[38] It then passed to the Orsini, and in 1640 became the property of the Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici, whose wild orgies and bacchanalian feasts made a strange contrast to the philosophical discussions of the academicians of former days. On the death of the Cardinal, leaving immense debts, gardens and palace were bought by Ferdinando Ridolfi, Marquis of Montescudaro. The Strozzi inherited the property, and sold it to Prince Orloff. It now belongs to the Marquis Ippolito Ginori, whose wife is a descendant of the original owner, Rucellai; but the Oricellari gardens have been barbarously cut in two, and their glory has departed.

PALAZZO GIUGNI

_Via degl’Alfani._

Bartolomeo Ammannati built this palace for the rich merchant Simone da Firenzuola in 1577. He died soon afterwards, leaving a will forbidding his sons, or their heirs, “to dare, or to presume, either _inter vivos_, or by last will or testament for any reason whatever, to sell, give away or alienate, the said house.” In case his sons had no children the property was to go to the descendants of his brother Carlo, and failing them, to those of his daughter Virginia, married to Vincenzio Giugni. None of his sons had any children, so in 1640 the palace came into the possession of his Giugni grandchildren. The Giugni claimed descent from Junius Brutus, and were always Guelphs. The first Prior of fifty they gave to Florence was Ugolino, in 1291, and his descendant Bernardo, a man of great ability and consummate prudence, was the chosen spokesman when there was a popular tumult. Messer Galeotto Giugni, a staunch republican, was exiled, and together with his son, murdered at Rome by emissaries of Cosimo I. Vincenzio Giugni, husband of Virginia Firenzuola, became a Senator in 1600, a dignity also conferred on his son Niccolò, who married Cassandra, the last of the noble house of Bandini of Rome. The fine collection of ancient statues belonging to her uncle, Cardinal Ottavio Bandini, was brought to Florence and placed in the garden of the palace. Cinelli gives an account of them, as well as of the pictures in the gallery, in his _Bellezze della Città di Firenze_.

In 1830 the palace was sold to the Della Porta family, who still own it, and in 1871 it was admirably restored by the architect De Fabris, who scrupulously avoided adding to, or altering, the work of Ammannati. The coat-of-arms of the Firenzuola, a tiger girt with a golden girdle and holding a sickle in his right paw, is on the façade. In the latter half of the last century Palazzo Giugni was much frequented by English visitors to Florence, as Mr. Spence, a popular and well-known personage, inhabited the second floor during the winter.

PALAZZO GONDI

_Piazza S. Firenze. No. 1._

The progenitor of the great family of the Gondi, whose descendants played an important part in French history, was a certain Bellincozzo, who owned a house and a tower in the XIIth century near Sta. Maria degl’Ughi, in Florence. One of his descendants, Forte, signed the peace with Genoa in 1201, and from his grandson Gondo the family took their name. Geri de’ Gondi lent money to the Republic of Florence, his name appearing as a large creditor in 1324, and a few years later that of his son Simone, who solemnly swore allegiance to the Guelph party in 1351. But seven years afterwards he was accused of intriguing in favour of the Ghibellines, and he and his descendants were declared incapable of holding office. This sentence was annulled in 1438 in favour of his grandson, Simone, who was elected Gonfalonier of Justice, and lent 8,000 golden florins to the State. His brother Leonardo sold the old family house and tower near Sta. Maria degl’Ughi to Palla Novello Strozzi in the XVth century, and in 1488 his son Giuliano began to build the fine palace in Piazza San Firenze; Giuliano da San Gallo, with whom he had made a close friendship at Naples, being his architect. He rendered such services to King Ferdinando of Naples that he offered him a large pension, but Gondi, being, as the Florentines say, “all of one piece,” refused, on the plea that no citizen of a free republic should accept money from a foreign potentate. So Ferdinando’s son, King Alfonso, bestowed on him the privilege of placing a ducal crown in his coat-of-arms. Giuliano was twice Gonfalonier of Justice, and died in 1501, before his magnificent palace was finished.

A cousin of his, Giovanbattista Gondi, went to Paris, became a naturalized French citizen and married a lady-in-waiting of Queen Catherine. Having no children he adopted his nephew Girolamo, a clever politician employed by the Queen and her sons after her in various delicate missions. He received Henri IV. and his bride on their entry into Paris in the fine Hôtel de Gondi built by him, but which his son Jean Baptiste was forced to sell. It was bought by the King, who gave it to the Prince de Condé. He also built a palace in Florence near Sta. Maria Maggiore, which was sold to the Orlandini. Another Gondi, Alberto, married the _gouvernante_ of the royal children, widow of the Baron de Retz. A distinguished soldier he was in such favour at Court that he was sent by Charles IX. as his proxy to marry Elisabeth of Austria. In 1573 he became a Marshal of France, and some years later was one of the hundred noblemen of high birth who first received the Order of St. Esprit. In 1584 he was created Duc de Retz, and was in command of the troops when Henri IV. entered Paris. His eldest son Charles, Marquis de Belle-Isle, married the Princesse Antoinette d’Orleans, daughter of the Duc de Longueville and of the Princesse de Bourbon, and was killed before Mont St. Michel when only twenty-seven. Another son, Henri, in whose favour his uncle the Cardinal de Gondi retired, became Bishop of Paris. The youngest was the first Archbishop of Paris, and his nephew Jean François Paul, the famous Cardinal de Retz who joined the ranks of the Fronde after incurring the enmity of Mazarin, succeeded him. Imprisoned by order of the King in the castle of Nantes, he contrived to escape to Spain, and embarked on a galley lent to him by the King for Piombino. After passing some years in Rome he resigned his archbishopric, and was allowed to return to France in 1662, when the King made him Abbot of St. Denis, where he wrote his well-known memoirs.[39]

But to return to the stately palace in Florence which Giuliano de’ Gondi began in 1488, and by will charged his sons to finish. The courtyard and the balustrade of the staircase, decorated with delicate carvings of animals and foliage, are among the finest things San Gallo ever did. In the large room upstairs is a handsome wooden ceiling, and a beautiful fireplace with a _frontone_, or mantel-front, also by San Gallo, representing the triumph of Neptune, and two statues of Hercules and of Samson. “It is so richly carved and so varied in style, and so beautiful,” writes Vasari, “that naught like it had been seen before, nor one with so many figures.” The old Roman statue in the palace is mentioned in a letter from Giuliano da San Gallo’s son, Francesco, to the head of the hospital of the Innocenti. “My father told Michelangelo that the statue in the house of the Gondi represents a Consul, and was found when the foundations for the palace of the Guelph party were being dug, where once existed the baths. He carried it to the Gondi palace, which he was then building, with the intention of placing it at the corner in the Piazza. But this was not done, as the palace was not finished.”

The fountain in the courtyard was erected by the descendant and namesake of Giuliano de’ Gondi, and by special grace he was allowed by the Grand Duke Ferdinando I. to take water from the fountain in the Piazza della Signoria. When Florence became the capital of Italy the Via de’ Gondi was too narrow for the increased traffic, and a large portion of the old palace was taken off, but the southern façade was admirably rebuilt. The palace still belongs to the Gondi family.

PALAZZO GRIFFONI (NOW GATTAI-BUDINI)

_Via de’ Servi. No. 57._

About 1250 the Servites bought so much more land than was necessary for their church, convent and orchard, that a large space was left in front of the church. In winter the mud was knee deep, and in summer the faithful were enveloped in clouds of dust when they went to mass. So the friars petitioned the Captains of the Guelph party to make a paved road from the Via de’ Servi to the S.S. Annunziata. In 1464 the Prior of the Order decided to sell some of the waste land near the Via de’ Servi, and the first buyer was Puccio Pucci. He did not carry out the covenants of the sale, and the land was sold to Roberto de’ Ricci in 1515; some thirty years later his sons ceded their rights to the brothers Griffoni. Ugolino Griffoni, secretary to Ramazzotto, the confidential adviser of Cosimo I., held, among other rich benefices, that of Maestro dell’ Altopascio and had the title of Monsignore as an Apostolic Pronotary. He, like many of the Duke’s courtiers, called in Bartolomeo Ammannati as his architect, and the contract between them of 4th September 1563 still exists in the State archives.[40] Ten years later the marble coat-of-arms, which is now on the façade in the Piazza, was placed above the central window in Via de’ Servi. The balcony was one of the first works by Gian Bologna, but the palace was only entirely finished in 1772 by Pietro Griffoni.

Cinelli writes in the _Bellezze della Città di Firenze_, “This beautifully proportioned and ornate palace, with a fine frieze under windows of the Doric order, was built by Bernardo Buontalenti;” but he cannot have seen the above-mentioned contract, nor can Vasari have known of it, as he states that the architect was Giuliano di Baccio d’Agnolo. This is impossible, as Giuliano died two years before Ugolino Griffoni demolished the shops belonging to the first owner of the land. Additional proof that Ammannati was the architect of the fine palace, one of the few instances in Florence of an unplastered red brick building, exists in the Riccardiana library, in a book treating of arithmetic, geometry, etc., in which Ammannati made architectural sketches. Among them are a sketch of chimney-piece, the plan of a loggia, and some drawings of doors, all marked “for I’Altopasso.”

In 1800 Gaetano Griffoni sold his family palace to the Marquess Ferdinando Riccardi at whose death it went to his heir the Marquess Mannelli (who took the name of Riccardi). He sold it to the Antinori family in 1847. When, about forty years later, the palace was bought by Cav. Gattai and his son-in-law Signor Budini, but little remained of the beautiful friezes; the stone-work of the windows was crumbling away, and the cornice had not been completed. The palace has been admirably restored by the architect Boccini, who among other things did away with the shutters, which disfigured the façade and were destroying the fine ornamentation of the windows.

PALAZZO GUADAGNI

_Piazza S. Spirito. No. 11._

This noble palace, with its arched windows and its beautiful loggia supported by fine columns, was built for Rinieri Dei towards the end of the XVth century by Cronaca, on the site of houses belonging to the ancient family of Bischieri. The lantern at the corner resembles those of the Strozzi palace, and is probably by the famous Niccolò Grosso, surnamed il Caparra.

The first of the Dei family to attain eminence in Florence were Giovanni di Deo, one of the twelve Buonomini in 1445, and his brother Domenico, ambassador to the Court of Naples. Miliano was a Prior in 1743, and his brother Benedetto went, amongst other places, as ambassador to Constantinople, where he stayed seven years and was so trusted by the Sultan that he despatched him on a mission to Damascus. He has left an interesting chronicle of contemporary events in Florence. The magnificent palace at the corner of the Piazza S. Spirito was let in 1568 by Rinieri’s son for two years to Don Garcia di Toledo, brother of Eleonora, wife of Cosimo I. Giovanni, last of the Dei family, died in 1683, and left his patrimony to the Buonomini di S. Martino, a confraternity which still exists and does much good among the poor who are ashamed to beg. They sold the palace the following year to Donato Guadagni.

Progenitor of the Guadagni, according to Passerini,[41] was Guittone, son of Migliore of S. Martino di Lubaco, a village on the slopes of Monte Croce in the diocese of Fiesole. The Guadagni arms, a cross edged with thorns, confirms this, that particular spot being called Croce alla Spina. Ser Guadagno di Guitto, his descendant, must have attained a foremost position in Florence, as he was one of the three Priors of Guilds who, together with the Consuls, ruled the city in 1204, and his son Gianni was an Elder fifty years later. The Guadagni were Guelphs; and Gianni and his young son Pierotto fought at Montaperti in 1260, and were exiled with so many of the other great Florentine families. On the return of his party to power, Pierotto, who was one of the richest bankers in Florence, was twice elected Gonfalonier of Justice; but before his death in 1298 the bank failed, and his palace close to the Duomo, near the old Porta a Balla, was let to Antonio Orsi, the warlike Bishop of Florence.

The Guadagni seem to have been a hot-headed, quarrelsome race. Migliorozzo fought with distinction against Henry VII, and again at Montecatini and at Altopascio. In 1327 he attacked and wounded his cousin Gherardo, and then attempted to poison him and his wife. The latter died from the effects of the poisoned cakes, and Migliorozzo was fined and condemned to lose his right hand and his left foot, but was pardoned at the intercession of Gherardo. Lapo Guadagni was beheaded in 1344 for attempting to assassinate his cousin Filippo and killing a priest who defended him. In 1410 Antonio Guadagni also lost his head for trying to defraud the Commune of Florence by swearing that a certain Gaspero was the son of Francesco da Carrara, Lord of Padua, who had been strangled by the Venetians, to enable him to draw out money deposited by his supposed father in the _Monte_.

Bernardo Guadagni is well known as the man whose debts were paid by Rinaldo degl’Albizzi, in order that he might be elected Gonfalonier of Justice and sentence Cosimo de’ Medici to exile, who only escaped a worse fate by bribing the Gonfalonier. Antonio, his son, fought with distinction against both Visconti and Paolo Guinigi, Lord of Lucca, but the return of Cosimo in 1434 was fatal to all the adherents of the Albizzi. Declared a rebel for not taking up his residence in Barcelona, to which place he was exiled for ten years, Antonio was taken prisoner at Fermo in 1436 and beheaded. The curious thing is that twenty-two years later he was again condemned to death as a rebel, and the sentence had to be revoked as impossible of execution against a dead man. A cousin of his, Tommaso, born in Savoy and married to a Frenchwoman, made so large a fortune by trade that “riche comme Gadagne” became a proverbial saying in Lyons, where he built a magnificent hospital and a fine house in the street named after him. He left his money and many domains to his nephew and namesake, whose descendants became French citizens with French titles, Conte de Verdun, Baron de Beauregard, de Champeroux, etc.

Jacopo, a nephew of Tommaso, remained in Italy, and bowed his neck to the yoke of the Medici. He was made a Senator in 1561 by Cosimo I. and occupied himself, as did also his two sons, in adorning the Guadagni palace near the Duomo. His grandson, Pierantonio, began the splendid gallery, the library and the museum of antiquities, which became famous in the XVIIIth century and in the beginning of the XIXth, after his father had bought the splendid old palace of the Dei. Ortensia Guadagni married a nephew of Pope Leo XI. and after his death became lady-in-waiting to Vittoria della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, whose education she had superintended. Created a Marchioness in her own right, an unheard-of thing in the Grand Duchy, she was invested with the feudal estate and castle of S. Leolino del Conte, with the obligation of furnishing sixty-nine soldiers to the State, and was allowed to leave her title to her brother Tommaso’s eldest heirs male. He it was who employed Gherardo Silvani to build the palace which afterwards passed into the possession of the Dukes of San Clemente (see p. 303), and his son Francesco was a patron of the arts and an intimate friend of Salvator Rosa. Alessandro, great-nephew of the Tommaso Guadagno who settled in France, assassinated Andrea Davanzati in 1566, and was condemned to death _in contumaciam_. After some years Catherine de’ Medici obtained his pardon from her uncle the Grand Duke Francesco I., and he returned to Florence, where he built, after the design of Gherardo Silvani, says Passerini, a fine palace on the site of the old houses of his family on the Piazza del Duomo, which now belongs to the Marchese Strozzi of Mantua. Baldinucci, however, only mentions the coat-of-arms on the palace as being the handiwork of Silvani. Marquess Neri Guadagni, who died in 1862, left an only daughter, married to Marchese Dufour Berte, whose son now owns the great palace in Piazza S. Spirito.

PALAZZO GUICCIARDINI

_Via Guicciardini. No. 13._

This gloomy large palace was entirely rebuilt by Gherardo Silvani for the Guicciardini, “changing it from the old to the modern form and creating a fine staircase,” writes Baldinucci. It stands on the site of several houses belonging to the Benizzi, where S. Filippo Benizzi, General of the Servite Order, who out of humility declined the Papal tiara, was born in 1233.

The Guicciardini came from Poppiana in the Val di Pesa in the XIIth century, and at once took their place among the rich bankers of Florence. Forty-four of the family were Priors and sixteen became Gonfaloniers of Justice, among them Luigi, who was accused of lack of energy at the time of the Ciompi riots. By a whimsical coincidence the mob insisted on knighting him in the Piazza della Signoria, whilst his house was being plundered and burnt. His son Giovanni was Commissary of War with the army of the League in Lombardy and again at Lucca in 1430, when the defeat of the Florentine troops was attributed, not only to his want of prudence, but to his love of gold. He was tried and acquitted; and there is little doubt the accusation was false, promoted by Cosimo de’ Medici whom Luigi had always opposed. Piero Guicciardini on the contrary favoured the ambitious designs of Cosimo, and his son Luigi, when Podestà of Fermo in 1435, captured Antonio Guadagni, the great enemy of the Medici, and sent him to Florence, where he was beheaded. Some years later Francesco Sforza made Luigi Podestà of Milan. With the exception of the few months, during which he was at different epochs Gonfalonier of Justice, most of his life was spent out of Florence as ambassador to various Italian princes and towns. His brother Niccolò married the daughter of the famous condottiere Braccio di Fortebraccio, Lord of Perugia. He was one of the fifteen citizens elected to govern Florence after the death of Leo X. who were dismissed as too republican when Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici arrived in the city. Niccolò was in danger of losing his head after the capitulation of Florence, as he had been one of the most active of the _Dieci di Guerra_ who conducted the defence. His son Braccio, taken prisoner at Montemurlo, was condemned to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Volterra.

The celebrated historian Francesco Guicciardini, nephew to Niccolò, was born in 1482. At twenty-three he was already so able a lawyer that the Signoria appointed him to read the Institutes in public; he then began to practise at the bar and his reputation for eloquence, acumen and gravity, obtained him the post of ambassador to Ferdinand the Catholic of Aragon, from whom his enemies say he accepted a bribe. “Certain it is,” writes Symonds, “that avarice was one of his besetting sins, and that from this time forward he preferred expediency to justice, and believed in the policy of supporting force by clever dissimulation.” In 1513 Leo X. came to Florence, and discerning the ability of Francesco Guicciardini appointed him Governor of Reggio and Modena, to which Parma was added in 1521. Two years later Clement VII. made him Viceroy of the Romagna, and in 1527 Lieutenant-General of the Papal army with supreme authority. This, Passerini declares, was the chief cause of the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of the Pope, the Duke of Urbino disdaining to take orders from a mere lawyer. In the same year he fruitlessly strove to uphold the Medicean cause in Florence, only incurring the hatred of his fellow-citizens and the bitter reproaches of the Pope, who accused him of want of energy. Retiring to his villa near Arcetri he began his famous History, but alarmed at the aspect of things in Florence, he fled to Rome in 1529 and was declared a rebel. Three years later he returned as one of the twelve magistrates who “reformed” the city according to the commands of Clement VII. and the Emperor, “when,” as Varchi tells us, “Messer Francesco Guicciardini was more cruel and more ferocious than the others” [in punishing and proscribing the anti-Palleschi citizens]. He was elected to the Senate of the Eighty, and undertook to defend the cause of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici before Charles V. at Naples, “which he did with such ardour,” writes Bernardo Segni, “confuting the accusations one by one with such contempt ... that the exiles styled him Messer Cerrettieri.”[42] He won the cause and Alessandro returned to Florence as absolute ruler. After the murder of the Duke, Guicciardini thought that the young Cosimo would be easily led, and supported his candidature to the throne with all his might. But for once the astute lawyer had misjudged his man. Cosimo I. made him understand that his advice was not wanted and that he intended to be sole master in Florence, and Pitti writes: “when the Duke Cosimo dismissed him together with certain of his colleagues his rage was great.... Astonished and deeply hurt he retired to his villa of Sta. Margarita at Arcetri where, carried away by anger, he re-wrote much of his History to prove that he did not belong to the sect of the Palleschi; and where he could, he attempted to show that he was but an instrument of the Republic.”[43] He spent the last year of his life in writing his famous histories and died, aged 58, on 22nd May, 1540. Varchi says of him: “Messer Francesco, besides his noble birth, his riches and his academical degree, and besides having been Governor and Viceroy for the Pope, was highly esteemed and enjoyed a great reputation; not only for his knowledge, but for his great practical acquaintance with the affairs of the world and the actions of men. Of such he would discourse admirably, and his judgment was sound. But his conduct did not tally with his speech; being by nature proud and curt, he was swayed sometimes by ambition, but oftener by avarice, in a manner unbecoming to a well-bred and modest man.” For an analysis of Guicciardini’s masterly _Istoria d’Italia_ and _Opere Inedite_, I cannot do better than refer my readers to J. A. Symonds’ brilliant pages in the first volume of his _Renaissance in Italy_. The actual representative of the family, Count Guicciardini, descends from a brother of the great historian and lives in the old palace in which he was born and brought up.

PALAZZO LARDEREL

_Via Tornabuoni. No. 19._

The Giacomini were among the illustrious families in olden days in Florence, and their coat of arms is still to be seen on an angle of this beautiful little palace. Messer Gherardo Tebalducci, a prominent citizen in 1280, had several sons, one of whom, for some unknown reason, dropped the family name and adopted his own Christian name Giacomino as a surname, which often occurs in the lists of the Priors. Antonio Giacomini was a brave soldier who in 1498 saved Poppi from falling into the hands of Alviano, four years later he acted as Commissary-General of the forces in the war with Pisa and the following year he was sent with 500 men into the Romagna against the Venetians. In 1504 he again fought the Pisans, seized Ripafratta and other strong castles, and then marched against his old antagonist Alviano, who was advancing to the help of Pisa, and routed him at Campiglia. Jacopo Nardi tells us that notwithstanding such great services the Republic of Florence let her old servant die in extreme poverty.

The Giacomini were zealous upholders of freedom. Francesco, one of the _Dieci di Guerra_ in 1529, was so violent in his hatred of the Medici, that he denounced Carlo Cocchi for saying that it would be better not to expose the city to the horrors of a siege and to capitulate at once, because after all she belonged to the Medici. This ill-considered speech cost Cocchi his life. Another of the Giacomini, taken prisoner at Montemurlo with Filippo Strozzi, was beheaded in the Bargello.

A branch of the family must however have been fortunate in trade, as Settimanni notes in his Diary, “on the 10th October, 1580, the beautiful house of the Giacomini at S. Michele degl’Antinori was begun.” It is curious that neither he nor any other contemporary writer gives the name of the architect of the “Palagetto degl’ Giacomini,” as the Florentines lovingly called the building they admired so much, but it is most probably the work of Giovanni Battista Dosio of San Gemignano. It remained in the possession of the family until the death of Lorenzo, last of the Giacomini, in 1764, who left it to his widow for life and then to the Michelozzi Boni. After passing through various hands the palace was bought in 1839 by Count F. de Larderel, a Frenchman who made a large fortune in borax at Volterra, and whose daughter Countess Mirafiore now owns it.

PALAZZO LEONETTI (NOW DE WITTE)

_Lung’Arno Guicciardini. No. 1._

A love-story, ending in a happy marriage, is symbolized in the quaint ornamentation of the palace. Bernardo Vettori, surnamed “il Biondo” (the fair-haired) died, leaving his widow Ginevra with one daughter, heiress to a large fortune. Piero Salviati married the young widow and induced her to affiance little Maddalena to his own son by a former marriage, but before Maddalena was of marriageable age her intended husband was killed in battle. In summer, like most Florentines, the Salviati went to their villa which was near to one owned by young Lodovico Capponi. He fell passionately in love with the golden-haired Maddalena, and she with him. Her step-father opposed the marriage as he wanted to keep her fortune in his own family, and he had influence enough at court to induce Duke Cosimo I. to forbid it. In spite of her mother’s entreaties Maddalena was put into a convent and every effort was made to provoke her lover, whose fiery temper was well known, into committing some act of violence. Ginevra at last succeeded in interesting the Duchess Eleonora in her behalf, who asked Maddalena to stay at the Pitti palace for a few days. Instead of days she remained months and, by order of the Duke, Lodovico Capponi’s name was always mentioned with contempt and contumely, while Sigismondo de’ Rossi, a favourite of Cosimo, was lauded to the skies. Lodovico, thus separated from Maddalena, determined that at any rate he would see her from afar and took a house belonging to the Gianfigliazzi at Santa Trinita, from the windows of which he could see the court pass over the bridge. The Florentines took such interest in the lovers that a crowd always assembled to watch the stolen glances they exchanged.

The Duchess was touched by the unhappiness and constancy of Maddalena, and it is supposed that it was by her suggestion that one morning at daylight an old woman appeared at Capponi’s bedside and bade him go at once to the palace and fetch Maddalena, and to prepare everything for the marriage. “In twenty-four hours,” writes an old chronicler, “Lodovico, among other magnificent things, caused an artist to paint a splendid and large shield with his arms and those of Maddalena, surrounded with olive branches and the word OPTATA, a motto of his own invention much praised for its brevity and its meaning; she being a Vettori, and peace, symbolized by the olive, following on the victory gained by her after war.” The wedding was a gay one and the house not being large enough Piazza Santa Trinita was used as a ball-room. “Comfits fell thick as hail in spring, and wine flowed like water.” The triumph of true love was very popular among the nobles, who feared the Duke would interfere in other marriages had he succeeded in preventing this one.

The lovers went to live in the old Vettori palace and amused themselves by decorating it in charming and symbolical fashion. Above the two large windows was inscribed LODOVICUS CAPPONIUS, to show that he was now the master of the palace and of its mistress, while the olive with the word OPTATA served as a decoration to the capitals of the pilasters, which bore at their base the Capponi arms on one side, the Vettori on the other. The motto OPTATA and the olive branches appeared also on the ornamented frieze under the first-floor windows, while on the smaller windows, in lieu of the ornaments generally used, were the arms of the two families.[44]