Chapter VI: Preface (6)

“Now the Duchess, by one of her waiting-women, was used to send to the Duke’s room on Sundays and other holidays a silver basin covered with a fair cloth, containing collars, cuffs and such-like things which the Duke was wont to change on those days. But on this the 1st of January, a day sacred to Christians because on it is celebrated the circumcision of Our Lord and also because according to the rites of the Roman Church it is the beginning of the year, the present sent was of a different nature. Taking the head of poor Caterina, which though bloodless and cold yet preserved the beauty which had been the cause of her death, the Duchess placed it in the basin, covered it with the usual cloth and sent it by her waiting-woman, who knew nought of the business, into the Duke’s room. When he rose and lifted the cloth to take his clean linen, let his horror be pictured when he saw such a pitiful sight. It is not my intention to describe here the lamentations, the sorrow, the anguish and the tears shed over the lifeless head of his love; they can be better imagined than writ with a pen. Knowing full well that his wife had done this deed he would have no more of her, and for many a long year refused to be where she was. When she came to Florence, he left for one of his villas, or for Rome where he had large estates; and if she went to a villa or to Rome, incontinently he returned to Florence.

“But to return to our lamentable story. When the murder was known next day and the bodies of the unfortunate women were recognised, Giustino Canaccj, the husband of Caterina, and Bartolomeo and Francesco his sons were seized and imprisoned together with another son, whose name I forget, with his wife and an unmarried daughter of the said Giustino and one married to Luigi Tedaldi as well as Luigi himself. But against those scoundrels who committed the murder, either because the court had no knowledge of them, or because they had taken refuge in flight, or for some other occult reason, no steps were taken, nor against their principal; so true is the common saying that justice acts only against the poor, and that laws are like cobwebs, which catch flies and such small creatures while large ones tear and break them. Of the above-named prisoners, Giustino, his daughters, his step-son and the other son with his wife were liberated after a time as innocent; but Bartolomeo and Francesco were kept in prison and subjected to torture. Francesco, either really innocent and not present at the murder, or more prudent, or perchance more fortunate, confessed nothing and after many months was set free; but Bartolomeo, they say, whether truly or not will never be known, confessed to have aided in this terrible affair and on the ... of 1639 was beheaded in the doorway of the Bargello. Small applause did justice get for this execution, good citizens being scandalized that the less guilty one who had been, as we say, dragged into the business by the hair of his head and was known to have been a poor wretch of small wit, and thought to have been tortured into saying more than he knew, should suffer capital punishment; while the real delinquent, the principal and head of it all, received no punishment save perchance from her own conscience and sense of shame. It is true, and it was said at the time, that Madame Christine of Lorraine, grandmother to the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, a princess of great learning, good and pious, and very zealous in the cause of justice, horrified by so atrocious a deed wished to have the Duchess arrested; but as soon as the murder had been committed she fled to her villa of S. Cerbone, and warned of her danger left for Rome; so justice contented itself with exiling her, but the sentence was soon commuted.

“Such was the end of the barbarity and cruelty of Duchess Veronica which I have described at length, not from any love of evil-speaking, but from the desire to enlighten posterity. The more so that it was said that justice, if it merits the name, in order to save the great bore heavy on the weak and, as we say, to throw dust in the eyes of the public, drew up two statements, one true which remained hid, one false which was published to the world. Let those who read these my recollections remember that our proverbs are always apt, and that whoso forgathers with great people is the last at table and the first at the gallows.”

* * * * *

Cardinal Gregorio, the last of this branch of the Salviati, left his villa in 1794 to his niece Anna, married to Prince Borghese. Her two sons Prince Cammillo Borghese and Prince Don Francesco Aldobrandino inherited it at her death in 1809, and the three sons of the latter, Prince Marc’ Antonio Borghese, Prince Cammillo Aldobrandini and Duke Scipione Salviati sold it to Mr Vansittart in 1844. Later the old place once more changed hands and became the property of the Duke of Candia, better known as Mario, whose glorious voice, charming and courtly manners and great personal beauty will be remembered by many of my readers. When Garibaldi was in Florence he paid a visit to Mario and Grisi, and a remarkably ill-painted picture still hanging in the corridor of Villa Salviati commemorates the scene. M. Hagermann, a Swede, bought the villa from Mario, and his heirs have lately sold it to Signor Turri.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] Eldest son of the Prince of Massa, of whom Donna Veronica was the fourteenth child.

[61] Daughter of Alessandro I, Duke of Mirandola, married to Alberico, brother to Veronica.

[62] Married in 1626 to Galeotto, son of Alessandro I, Duke of Mirandola.

[63] Le Nozze di Jacopo Salviati con Veronica Cybo, descritte da un contemporaneo, MDCXXVII. In Lucca co’ Torchi di B. Canovetti, 1871.

Al Conte Ottavio Sardi nel Giorno delle sue Nozze con la Nobile Donzella Olimpia Fatinelli offre congratulandosi Giovanni Sforza, VII Settembre MDCCCLXXI.

VILLA DI FONT’ ALL’ ERTA

The name of this whole district is Camerata, derived, says Salvini, from “camere” or deposits for water-conduits. Villani thinks Fiesole had two suburbs—Villa Arpina and Villa Camarti—the latter being the scattered village now called Camerata; but Boccaccio recounts that long before Fiesole was built or thought of, the forests which clothed the hills around were the favourite hunting-grounds of the fair goddess Diana. He describes her crinkly golden hair, tall, lithe figure, beautiful eyes and face “shining like the sun,” when in the month of May she met her nymphs—

“By the fair waters of a limpid Fount
With flowers and grasses ever freshly decked,
Still welling from the foot of Cecer’s mount,
Just where from midday Throne with rays direct
The Sun looks down....”[64]

“This,” writes Roberto Gherardi, “is the fountain now called Font’ all’ Erta, at the foot of Monte Ceceri looking due south, below the villa of the Signori Pitti-Gaddi; of which one can only now see some pieces of wall, and some ruins and vestiges in the public road at the beginning of the slope; but the people are still alive who assure me that about the year 1710 the course of the water which came from a tank a little above and from other springs near by, was deviated because it chilled the land below and damaged the crops of the podere. At the time of our Boccaccio I find that this podere with Houses, Tanks, &c., extending to the end of the plain of San Gervasio, was sold on the 5th June 1370 by Giovanni di Agostino degli Asini to Messer Bonifazio Lupo, Marquis of Soragona and a Knight of Parma, who at that time was admitted a citizen of Florence. Being moved by a spirit of much-to-be-praised piety and a feeling of gratitude towards the Florentine Republic, he obtained from the same on the 20th December 1377, as is stated by Ammirato in his XIII. book, permission to found the hospital in Via San Gallo of the said city, called precisely Bonifazio from the name of so pious a benefactor.”[65]

By PIETRO POLO GALEOTTI.

(_Villa di Pelraja_).]

By DOMENICO DI POLO.

(_Villa di Cafagginolo_).]

By MAZZAFERRI.

(_Villa di Pratolino_).]

When Florence became the capital of Italy the old Via di Font’ all’ Erta was done away with and a broad boulevard took its place. Remains of an old water-conduit and cistern of Roman work were unearthed below the tank mentioned by Roberto Gherardi; a rusty sacrificial knife, some human bones and a few bits of Roman pottery were also found near by. On moonlight nights “the White Spectre,” as the peasants call it, a dim form—a cloud of white mist—floated hither and thither over the spot, but the uneasy spirit has not been seen since the new road was made.

Font’ all’ Erta then came into the possession of the Nuti, and Bernadino Nuti sold it in 1506 to Taddeo Gaddi, a grandson of the great painter Taddeo who was an intimate friend of Dante. Taddeo the elder made a large collection of manuscripts of the Divine Comedy which he afterwards left to his son Angelo who, discarding the brush for trade, established a banking-house at Venice with some of his brothers and at last persuaded his father also to join him. Thenceforward, remarks Litta, Taddeo only painted occasionally, from habit. Angelo died at Venice in 1378 (or 1387), leaving his riches and manuscripts to his nephew Angelo, who increased the collection by purchase and by copies made with his own hand. Taddeo, Angelo’s son, as already said bought Font’ all’ Erta in 1506. He was three times elected a Prior of the Republic of Florence, and in 1496 was one of the Ten Magistrates of Liberty and Peace at the time of the war with Pisa. In 1527 he received Antonio Bonsi, the ambassador sent by Pope Clemente VII, (who declared that unless he returned to Florence he would not be buried in consecrated ground) “to try to reason and treat with the city. But no sooner did he (Bonsi) arrive at Camerata in the villa of the Gaddi, than the Signoria, declining to hear him or to listen to any explanations, sent Messer Bartolomeo Gualterotti to tell him to depart immediately, and Andrea Giugni to accompany him out of the state and to see their orders were obeyed.”

Clemente paid for the reception of his ambassador by creating Taddeo’s son Niccolò a cardinal in May 1527; but at Bologna two years later Niccolò lost the favour of the Pope by warmly pleading the cause of the Florentine envoys, and became an avowed enemy of the house of Medici. In 1532 Taddeo Gaddi died and Font’ all’ Erta went to his son Sinibaldo, one of the richest citizens of Florence and allied by marriage with the Strozzi. When Duke Alessandro de’ Medici was murdered in 1537 by his cousin Lorenzino, Cardinal Niccolò Gaddi was one of the chief promoters of the efforts made by the exiled Florentines to restore the republic. Leaving Rome with the Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi he hastened to Florence to collect troops and partisans. But the young Cosimo was too wily. Cardinal Salviati had to fly the city, Ridolfi hid in his own house, and “Gaddi,” writes old Varchi, “went like a plucked fowl to his brother’s villa at Camerata,” where he lay in hiding for some days and then left for Bologna.

Sinibaldo Gaddi was forced by Cosimo I, to contribute large sums “for the needs of the state,” but in 1556 the Duke made him head of the _Monte_ or Government bank as a kind of compensation. He died in 1558 and his son Niccolò inherited Font’ all’ Erta and made it what we now see. Scipione Ammirato mentioning him in a letter says: “he is now at his villa turning it into a palace more suited to the city than to the country.” Ammannati is believed to have designed the magnificent loggia and to have superintended the improvements and alterations of the villa.

Niccolò Gaddi must have been a remarkable man. He was sent by the Duke Cosimo I, as ambassador to the Dukes of Ferrara and Mantua to announce his promotion by the Pope to be Grand Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards went to Rome to attend the ceremony of the coronation. In 1578 he was created a Senator and was one of those charged to reform the statutes of the guild of the merchants. A man of great learning and knowledge of art, his library, picture gallery and museum of antiquities were only second to those of the Medici. His garden, stocked with rare trees, shrubs and medicinal herbs, was beautiful and Florence owes the institution of her botanical garden chiefly to him. Niccolò was twice married, but his children died young, and the sons of his sister Maddalena, who had married a Pitti, became his heirs with the obligation of adding his name to their own. In 1755 the remnants of his fine library were bought by the Emperor Francis I, of Austria, Grand Duke of Tuscany, from Gaspero Pitti-Gaddi. 355 manuscripts were given to the Laurentian library, 727 manuscripts and 1451 rare editions of old books to the Magliabecchiana, and 28 manuscripts relating to public affairs to the Archives.

That Niccolò Gaddi loved Font’ all’ Erta, generally called the “Paradise of the Gaddi,” and was proud of it, is shown by the following extracts from his will written five days before his death.

“In the name of God, on the ninth day of June 1591 Indiction 4. Gregorio XIIII, the Holy Pontiff, and of His Serene Highness Ferdinando Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, I Niccolò di Sinibaldo Gaddi Cavalier of San Jacopo make my testament as follows:—

“Firstly I commend my soul to God and my body to be placed in Sta. Maria Novella, in my place of burial.”