Chapter LXIII: says: “... I will that in the Hall of the Palace of (1)

Camerata an inscription shall be put up to my memory in such fashion and in such a position as shall be judged proper by the most excellent Signore Piero Angeli, whom I beg to do me the favour of visiting the said Palace, and my heirs shall receive him with the honour due to his most rare merits.”

Either “the most excellent Signore Piero Angeli” never went to Font’ all’ Erta or the heirs neglected to carry out the orders of Niccolò, for inscription there is none. It is said that in the carnival season faint sounds of old-fashioned dance music are heard there in the dead of night, and the rustling of silk robes and silvery laughter. But all attempts to see the ghostly dancers from the balcony running round the top of the lofty hall have failed.

In 1770 the villa was bought by Marchese Ponticelli of Parma who sold it to Niccolò Gondi, and in the drawing-room still hangs a portrait of the fascinating Paule Françoise Marguerite de Gondi who married the Duc de Crequy, de Bonne, de Lesdiguieres, &c., &c. She is pretty in a _piquante_ French style, and wears coquettishly a blue robe trimmed with ermine. Round the top of the room are frescoes by Maso da San Friano (Tommaso di Antonio Manzuoli). The Loggia which gives access to the villa is magnificent; it looks due south, over Florence and the valley of the Arno. Two fine old date-palms growing against it have withstood many a hard winter and give grace and beauty even to Ammannati’s splendid building. Count Pasolini who bought the villa in 1850 put up a fine Venetian lantern out of an old Contarini galley under a Della Robbia Madonna in the Loggia.

The villa stands high, about a mile from Florence, and a winding carriage road shaded by elms leads up from the plain ending in an avenue of tall cypresses. Thence the view of the hill of Fiesole is enchanting. Beautiful Doccia with its long line of arches lies bathed in sunshine, and just below is the villa where St Louis Gonzaga stayed with Pier Francesco del Turco to learn the Tuscan tongue. Landor’s old villa, now belonging to Professor Willard Fiske, faces us, with the valley of the Ladies below its garden wall, and the Affrico murmuring through its grounds. Visions of the fair Fiametta and her companions arise as one remembers how on the sixth day, after Elisa had crowned Dioneo king and laughingly told him it was time he should find out what a charge it was to rule over and guide women, the three youths sat down to play at draughts while she led the Ladies to an unknown valley. Leaving the “sumptuous palace” they walked about a mile, and “entering by a narrow path on a side where a crystal clear streamlet ran, they saw it to be as beautiful and delightful, especially at that season when the heat was so great, as can be imagined. And according to what some of them told me afterwards the level part of the valley was as circular as though drawn with compasses, yet it was an artifice of nature and not made by human labour. Little more than half a mile in circumference it was surrounded by six hills of no great height, and on the summit of each one was a palace built much in the shape of a small castle. The sides of the hills sloped towards the plain, as we see the seats in theatres from the top row descend in successive flights, always restricting their circles. And these hillsides, at least all those facing south, were clothed with vines, olive, almond, cherry and other fruit trees, and not a palm of ground was lost. Those looking to the north had copses of oak saplings, ash and other trees, green and straight as they could be. There was no other approach to the level plain than the one by which the Ladies had come; it was full of fir-trees, cypresses, bays and a few pines, so well placed and so well ordered as though planted by the greatest of artists. Little or no sun entered there, even when high in the Heavens it only just touched the earth clothed with sward of finest grass and rich in purple and other flowers. Besides this a rivulet, which was not a less delight, came from a valley dividing two of those small hills; it trickled down steep rocks of sandstone, and made in its fall a sound most delightful to hear, while the spray, from afar, seemed to be live silver broken into the lightest of showers. On reaching the level the rivulet gathered into a pleasant channel, rushed rapidly to the centre of the plain and there formed a lakelet, such as now and again townsfolk, who have the art, make in their gardens for fish-ponds. The depth of the lakelet was not more than up to the breast of a man, and so clear that not only the gravel bottom could be seen, but many fishes darting about here and there.... When the Ladies had observed everything they commended the place exceedingly and the heat being great, seeing the lake before them and having no fear of being seen, they decided to bathe ... and all seven disrobed and went down into the water, which hid their lovely white bodies no more than a thin glass would hide a crimson rose. Without causing the water to become turbid, they went hither and thither after the fish, which had scant hiding-places, trying to catch them with their hands. Having with great joy taken some, they remained some time in the water and then came forth and dressed.”

Returning to the Palace the Ladies described the valley and its lake in such glowing terms that next morning another expedition was agreed upon: “the sun’s rays had hardly begun to show when they started; never had the nightingales and other birds seemed to sing so gaily as on that morning. Accompanied by the song of birds they went as far as the Valley of the Ladies where they were greeted by many more, who appeared to them to rejoice at their coming. Walking about the valley and examining it more minutely it seemed to them so much the more beautiful than on the day before as the hour of the day was the more suitable to its loveliness. And when they had broken their fast with good wine and sweetmeats, in order not to be behind the birds they began to sing, and the valley sang with them always repeating the same songs they uttered, to which all the birds, as though loth to be vanquished, added sweet and novel notes. But the hour for eating having arrived and tables, according to the King’s pleasure, being set under the tall and spreading trees near to the lovely lakelet, they seated themselves; and whilst eating watched the fish swimming in the lake in great shoals.”[67]

Font’ all’ Erta is intimately connected with the making of the kingdom of Italy. Count Giuseppe Pasolini, who began public life in 1848 as minister of Commerce, Agriculture and the Fine Arts to Pius IX, a post he only occupied for a few months, bought it as already mentioned in 1850, when he frankly joined the party of “Young Italy.” There Ricasoli, Minghetti, La Marmora, Peruzzi, and all the liberal men of Italy often met together, and English well-wishers of Italy were frequent guests. In 1860 Count Pasolini became Governor of Milan for the King of Italy, and two years later he entered the Farini ministry for a short time as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Then he was named Prefect of Turin, a post he resigned after voting the transfer of the capital to Florence in 1864. His high character, undoubted ability and conciliatory manner caused him to be chosen for the difficult post of Commissary General of Venetia in 1866, and he entered Venice on the 20th October, two days before the plebiscite which was all but unanimous in favour of union with Italy—641,758 votes against 69. In 1867 Count Pasolini retired into private life, but in obedience to the King’s express request he accepted the Presidency of the Senate in March 1876. In December the same year he died at his family place near Ravenna aged sixty-one, leaving Font’ all’ Erta to his daughter Angelica, Countess Rasponi della Testa.

FOOTNOTES:

[64] _Ninfale Fiesolano._ Giov. Boccaccio. Firenze, 1834. Vol. XVII. p. 9. Translated by R. C. Trevelyan.

[65] _La villegiatura di Majano._ M.S. Roberto Gherardi, 1740.

[66] The mother of Niccolò Gaddi was Lucrezia, daughter of the Senator Matteo Strozzi, and his second wife was Maria Strozzi.

[67] _Il Decamerone._ Gio. Boccaccio. Firenze, 1827. Giornata Sesta, Novella X. p. 172, _et seq._

VILLA DI GAMBERAIA

Nothing definite is known of the history of this charming villa which stands among giant cypresses and gnarled ilexes on a terrace high above Settignano and overlooks the Val d’ Arno. From the name Gamberaia some have attempted to connect it with the great sculptor Antonio Rossellino, who with his brother Bernardo, the architect, was born in Settignano and whose family name was Gamberelli. But Antonio who, writes Varchi, “was so refined and delicate in his works, their beauty and smoothness being so perfect that his manner can in truth be called natural and absolutely modern...” died about 1479, whereas Gamberaia cannot have been built much before 1600. Not far off a small house is still standing which has always been pointed out as the one inhabited by the two artist brothers. It is unlikely that any of their descendants should have made a fortune large enough to build such a villa as Gamberaia or to lay out such a garden, without some record being left. Popular tradition, which is all we have to depend on, declares that several rills and springs of water formed a small lake or pond near by where the country folk used to catch crayfish (Gamberi), hence the name Gamberaia, the abode of crayfish. It is true that over one of the doors is a coat of arms bearing three crayfish on the right side and two half moons on the left, but I am informed by a competent authority that it is a fancy shield of late times and that the arms of the Gamberelli have six crayfish and a badge with three fleur de lis, as may be seen in Vasari’s life of Rossellino. Over a door in the large entrance hall is the inscription _Zenobius Lapius Fundavit MDCX_, and by the courtesy of the present owner of Gamberaia I have been lent a legal document about water rights, which has been a disputed question for nearly three hundred years. In digging the foundation of an out-house this winter (1900), a broken shield with the Lapi arms has been discovered. From this fact it would appear to be most probable that the builder of the villa was Zanobi Lapi; the pity is that the name of his architect is not forthcoming. In the centre of the villa is a small courtyard with elegant columns sustaining an arcade out of which open vaulted rooms, and on the north and south side of the villa project very original flying balconies supported on three arches. A small spiral staircase, hidden in the square column furthest from the house on one side, leads down from the first floor into the terrace garden. Zanobi Lapi died in 1619, nine years after he had built his villa, and left it to his nephews Jacopo di Andrea Lapi, and Andrea di Cosimo Lapi, but failing heirs male he directed that his property was to be divided between the families of Capponi and Cerretani. Jacopo and Andrea evidently inherited their uncles’ love for Gamberaia, as they at once began to buy up rights to the water from neighbouring proprietors, and to make conduits and large reservoirs to conduct it to various fountains and grottoes. In 1623 they bought a house and a podere, or farm, called La Doccia, which was especially rich in springs. Jacopo died the following year leaving a young son; the lands and the houses in Florence were divided between the cousins, but the villa of Gamberaia remained in their joint possession. “The most illustrious Signore Cosimo Lapi, a noble Florentine” then began to lay out one of the most characteristic seventeenth century gardens in the neighbourhood of Florence, with grottoes inlaid with shells of different kinds and various coloured marbles, statues, vases, fountains and _jeux d’eaux_ of every description. In the archives of Florence are several contracts made by him, between 1624 and 1635, with his neighbours for the purchase of springs and rills of water belonging to them, and the right to make conduits through their lands for the conveyance of the water to Gamberaia. In 1636 he had a lawsuit with a certain Signora Aurelia, a widow, who complained that he had deprived her of necessary water by the deep trenches and reservoirs dug near the confines of her property. The result of this inordinate love of fountains and curious _jeux d’eaux_ was, that when “the most illustrious Florentine Andrea Lapi” died in 1688, his son was obliged to heavily mortgage the estate to pay off his father’s debts. Jacopo’s son Giovan Francesco died in 1717 without heirs male, and the Lapi property was divided between the Capponi and the Cerretani; the latter taking three _podere_, or farms, and some small houses in Florence, the Capponi the villa of Gamberaia and two _podere_.

Remains of conduits, tanks and reservoirs in several properties near Gamberaia still remain to attest the considerable works made by Andrea Lapi for supplying water to his beloved villa. He no doubt planted the noble cypresses that tower like dark green steeples on either side of the long bowling alley that runs for some four hundred feet behind the house, ending to the north in one of those elaborate half grottoes, half fountains, inlaid with shells and decorated with stone figures of impossible animals and queer people in high relief of which Francesco de’Medici set the fashion at Pratolino and at Castello. To the south the long green walk ends in a delightful old stone balustrade with solemn grey stone figures, from whence the view over the fruitful, gently rolling hills crowned with villas or peasant houses is beautiful.

The terrace garden looks down on Settignano, a little village that can boast of more famous children than most large towns. Desiderio da Settignano, whose every work shows, as Vasari says, “that grace and simplicity that pleases everywhere and is recognised by everyone,” was the son of a stone-cutter of Settignano. He was so popular that for months after his death sonnets and epigrams were laid on his tomb by admirers.

Excellent architects were Meo Del Caprina and his brother Luca; the former worked at Ferrara and Rome, and designed the cathedral of Turin; the latter fortified Librafratta and other Pisan towns. Simone Mosca da Settignano was said to have been equal to Greek and Roman sculptors, he worked with Antonio da San Gallo in Sta. Maria della Pace at Rome and in the Farnese palace; also at Arezzo, Loreto, and at Orvieto, where he was induced to settle with his family and devote himself to the service of the cathedral. His son Francesco, called Moschino, “being born almost with the mallet in his hand,” sculptured some figures in the dome of Orvieto “to the wonder and astonishment of all beholders.” Simone Gioli, pupil of Andrea Sansovino, was another admirable sculptor, and his son Valerio carried on the family tradition. Antonio di Gino Lorenzi was also from Settignano, he helped his master Triboli to make the famous fountain at Castello and executed the monument of Matteo Corte in the Campo Santo of Pisa. Moreni, in his _Dintorni di Firenze_, gives a list of architects, sculptors and painters, too long to insert here, who were born in the little hill village. But all pale before the tremendous personality of Michelangelo Buonarroti, “the deathless artist,” as John Addington Symonds calls him. Brought to Settignano when but a few weeks old, his foster-mother was the wife as well as the daughter of a stone-cutter. “I drew the chisel and the mallet with which I carve statues in together with my nurse’s milk,” he told Vasari. His father’s small grey house with a loggia and a tower[68] lies below the terrace of Gamberaia, and forms a fitting foreground to the view of Florence backed by the chain of the Apennines.

After various vicissitudes Gamberaia was bought a few years ago by Princess Ghyka, who is restoring the beautiful old-fashioned garden to its pristine splendour with infinite patience and taste.

FOOTNOTES:

[68] It now belongs to Signor Chiesa.

VILLA DI MONTE GUFFONE

Monte Guffone was built at a time when castles and watch-towers were needed on the Tuscan hills, and the Acciajuoli, rivals of the Peruzzi and Bardi, determined to have a fortress-villa that should be a visible sign of their power and magnificence. The site chosen for it was the hilly country near San Casciano, between the river Pesa and the streamlet Virginio, a little off the high road to Volterra, commanding a varied landscape of vast woods of pine and oak, farms surrounded by olive-groves and vineyards, and hill-set villages with winding roads overhung with rosemary bushes. The first glimpse of Monte Guffone seen across the misty waves of olives is of a grand and shapely massed group of building, resting like a citadel on the shoulder of the hills. From its midst rises a tall tower closely resembling that of Palazzo Vecchio—with the difference that it starts straight from the ground. Upon nearing the villa there is a delightful sense of variety, as successive generations of the Acciajuoli have given it a different character until finally it has become a beautiful but somewhat baroque seventeenth century villa. Still, when walking on the broad balcony which probably covers the ancient bastions, there is the feeling of a great house built for defence, and the tower has been left untouched in a courtyard into which look large Michelangelesque windows framed with dark stone and set at regular intervals one from another, forming a perfect piece of work of its kind, and contrasting pleasantly with the mediæval watch-tower. On the northern side of the villa a façade has been added giving it almost an ecclesiastical appearance, enhanced by the group of sedate and sombre cypresses and ilexes growing at one corner of this otherwise joyous looking building. To the same period belongs the grand stone staircase on the garden side, leading down to a grotto encrusted with shells and ornamented with statues of the seasons, which even in their present shattered condition recall the past almost Medicean splendour of the place. The wall slopes out with spreading bastions forming an entrance to the grotto as though the architect had remembered the gateway of some Etruscan city, and above the arch is set a shield, supported by cupids, with the lions of the Acciajuoli house.

This once magnificent villa, now let out in tenements to poor people, was built, or at all events enlarged, early in the fourteenth century by the Grand Seneschal Acciajuoli, whose family first appears in Florentine history in the thirteenth century as merchants, rivalling, if they did not surpass, the Bardi and the Peruzzi in wealth. One of them, Niccola, stands gibbeted to all time by Dante. He and Baldo d’Aguglione, aided by the Podestà, tore out a sheet of the public records of the city in order to destroy the proof of certain frauds committed. Ironically Dante refers to the “well-guided city,” praising the old days—

“... when still
The registry and label rested safe.”

Unlike the present Florentines, who are never happy away from the shadow of their Duomo, the Acciajuoli thought nothing of going to far distant lands or of taking service with foreign princes. Thus Dardano, son of Lotteringo, passed most of his youth at Tunis as treasurer to the Bey. In 1305 he was back in Florence leading his fellow-citizens against Pistoja, and soon afterwards went as ambassador to Naples to offer the Lordship of Florence to the King, Robert of Anjou; two years later he returned there to beg assistance against Uguccione della Faggiuola who threatened to make himself master of the city. A cousin of his, Niccola Acciajuoli, left Florence for Naples at the age of twenty-one to negotiate a loan, and by his extraordinary personal beauty, grace and intelligence, won the heart of Catherine, titular Empress of Constantinople, widow of the Prince of Taranto; her brother-in-law the King, who recognised his capacity and diplomatic talents, appointed him the guardian of her three children. In 1338 Niccola accompanied Louis, the eldest of his wards, to Achaia in Greece, and for three years conducted the war against the Turks with great ability; but the death of King Robert, who left the kingdom of Naples to his niece Joan, proved the stepping-stone to his fortune. Married against her will to Andrew of Hungary, a coarse, uneducated man entirely under the dominion of his rude Hungarian followers, Joan had fallen passionately in love with her cousin Louis, Prince of Taranto; and when Andrew was strangled whilst asleep popular rumour connected Acciajuoli with the murder; the Queen married her cousin Louis, and Niccola became the trusted minister of the crown. The King of Hungary soon appeared on the scene to avenge the death of his brother, and finding he was too powerful to be opposed Acciajuoli persuaded Queen Joan and her young husband to take refuge in his splendid villa Monte Guffone near Florence. After passing some weeks with him they went to Avignon to implore the aid of Pope Clement VI, but the plague, which broke out in Naples soon afterwards, proved a more efficient ally; the King of Hungary fled from the stricken city and Niccola conducted Louis and Joan back to Naples where they were received with great demonstrations of delight. He was created Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom, Count of Melfi, etc., etc., and placing himself at the head of the army drove the Hungarians back to their own country. Peace was finally made through the intervention of the Pope, and then Acciajuoli set himself to free Sicily of the Spaniards; but during his absence the King was turned against him by the Neapolitan courtiers, and in dudgeon he threw up all his appointments and retired into private life. When, however, the Pope laid the kingdom under an interdict on account of unpaid taxes, he at once offered himself as mediator. Innocent VI, received him with extraordinary honours; raised the interdict at his request, gave him the Golden Rose (the first time a private person had been thus distinguished), named him a Senator of Rome, Count of the Campagna and Rector of the ecclesiastical Patrimony, and then sent him to Milan as envoy to Bernabo Visconti to obtain the restitution of Bologna. Finding diplomacy of no avail, Niccola put himself with the Papal Legate at the head of the papal troops and soon entered Bologna in triumph. Returning to Naples he lived in almost royal state until his death at the early age of fifty-six.

Besides Monte Guffone, Niccola Acciajuoli built the magnificent Certosa near Florence after the design of Orcagna, and the first of the family to be buried there was his handsome, brilliant son Lorenzo, “a Knight and a great Baron” Matteo Villani calls him in his description of the funeral. The body was sent from Naples and on the 7th April 1354 was taken “on a knightly hearse, one great charger being in front and one behind covered with silken housings emblazoned with the Acciajuoli arms, while the hearse was covered with rich hangings and a baldaquin of silk and gold, and over the coffin was fine crimson velvet; the horses were ridden by squires dressed in black, and preceding the hearse were seven squires on great chargers, their draperies trailing on the ground, with the aforesaid arms on their breasts in beaten silver. The two first squires bore plumed helmets, the third carried a standard and the other four had each a large banner with the Acciajuoli arms.” In 1366 Niccola also was buried at the Certosa near his son with great pomp.

Donato, a cousin of Niccola, had been sent to Corinth as governor, and in 1392 his brother Neri was created Duke of Athens, Lord of Megara, Platæa, Thebes and Corinth. Neri’s illegitimate son Antonio inherited only the Lordship of Bœotia and Thebes, while Athens returned to the crown of Naples. The Venetians immediately seized it, but Antonio, worthy scion of a splendid race, soon drove them out and held the place for himself. He was succeeded by his cousin Neri who, dethroned by his brother Antonio, only got back his estates after the death of the latter. Neri’s son was a child when his father died and Sultan Mahomet II, refusing to acknowledge his title to the throne, named Francesco, Antonio’s son, in his stead. His tyranny was so intolerable that the Sultan ordered him to be strangled and thus, after seventy years of sovereignty ended the Acciajuoli rulers of Greece. Demostene Tiribilli-Giuliani, from whose work _Le Famiglie Celebre Toscane_ I have gathered the above facts remarks, with a fine disregard of history, “no one mentions Athens after this, indeed its existence was hardly known until our day, when it became the capital of Greece.”

The Acciajuoli constantly figure in the history of Florence as Gonfaloniers, Vicars, Ambassadors, Envoys, Cardinals and Bishops; and one of the saddest and most romantic stories of the eighteenth century has an Acciajuoli as its hero. Roberto, eldest son of Donato Acciajuoli, handsome, clever, brave and fascinating, had long admired Elisabetta Mormorai, wife of Captain Giulio Berardi. On the death of her husband he declared his love and the beautiful widow accepted him. But he reckoned without his uncle Cardinal Acciajuoli, who had made up his mind that his handsome nephew should make an alliance in Rome which might help him in his designs on the papal chair. Prayers, admonitions and threats being of no avail, the Cardinal induced the Grand Duke Cosimo III, to imprison Elisabetta in a convent; upon which Roberto contracted a canonical marriage with her by letter and fled to Milan where he published it, demanding at the same time justice from the Grand Duke, the Archbishop, the Cardinal and his own father. In Lombardy the validity of the marriage was upheld, while in Florence it was declared to be a mere engagement. The lady was removed from her convent to a fortress, upon which Roberto, while the papal chair was vacant in 1691, wrote a circular to all the cardinals, imploring justice from them and from the future pope. All Italy was interested in the unhappy lovers and blamed the high-handed Cardinal and his slavish abettor Cosimo III. In vain Cardinal Acciajuoli tried to excuse himself by throwing all the blame on his relations, his conduct lost him the chance of being made pope, while the Grand Duke was accused of arbitrary and unjust conduct and of truckling to the private spite of a cardinal. Cosimo determined to revenge himself, but for the moment he set the fair prisoner free who immediately joined her husband in Venice, where everyone pitied them and blamed the Grand Duke, by whom formal application was made to the Republic to deliver up the lovers, accusing them of want of respect to their sovereign. They fled, but their steps were dogged, and at Trent they were arrested disguised as friars and taken back to Tuscany, where Roberto Acciajuoli was condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the fortress of Volterra and the loss of his patrimony, while Elisabetta was given the choice of repudiating her marriage or being immured in the same prison. In the hope of mitigating his sentence she chose the former and ended her days in tears and misery, while Roberto died in the most terrible prison of Tuscany, as anyone who has visited the _Mastio_ of Volterra will know.

This is but one of the many instances of Cosimo’s tyranny. An insensate bigot, he was entirely under the dominion of priests and monks who ruined the country and destroyed its morality. Few princes have been more hated by their subjects and their own family, or with better reason.

In the lovely Val di Pesa near Monte Guffone occurred the pretty scene so charmingly described in a long letter by that witty Tuscan, Ser Matteo Franco, chaplain to the Medici, who bandied sonnets and “strambotti” with Luigi Pulci. The austere, rather disagreeable Clarice, wife of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had not been fitted by her education in the stately Orsini palace at Rome for the brilliant pleasure-loving life at Florence, was returning from some baths near Volterra when, as Matteo Franco writes, “... we met paradise full of festive and joyous angels, that is to say Messer Giovanni, Piero, Giuliano and Julio on pillions with their attendants. And when they saw their mother they threw themselves off their horses, some by themselves, some with the help of others; and all ran forward and were lifted into the arms of Madonna Clarice with such joy and kisses and delight that I could not describe in a hundred letters. Even I could not refrain from dismounting; and before they got on their horses again, I embraced them all and kissed them twice; once for myself and once for Lorenzo. Darling little Giulianino said with a long O, o, o, ‘where is Lorenzo?’ We answered, ‘he has gone on before to Poggio to see you.’ Then he: ‘Oh no never,’ almost in tears. You never beheld so touching a sight. He and Piero, who has become a beautiful boy, the finest thing, by God, you ever saw, with such a profile he is like an angel, and rather long hair which stands out a little and is pretty to see. And Giuliano red and fresh as a rose, smooth, clean and bright as a mirror, joyous yet contemplative with those large eyes. Messer Giovanni also looks well, his colour is not so high but clear and natural; and Julio has a brown and healthy skin. All, in short, are happiness itself. And thus with great content a joyous party we went by Via Maggio, Ponte a Santa Trinita, San Michele Berteldi, Santa Maria Maggiore, Canto alla Paglia and Via de’ Martegli; and entered into the house _per infinita asecola asecolorum_ eselibera nos a malo amen.”[69]

FOOTNOTES:

[69] See _Florentia_. Isidoro Del Lungo. Firenze, 1897. P. 424.

VILLA DI CASTEL-PULCI

About six miles from Florence on the high road to Pisa stands the fine villa of Castel-Pulci, now a lunatic asylum. In ancient times the Pulci owned large possessions in the Val d’Arno, but the first notice I have found of them is in 1278 when Jacopo di Rinaldo Pulci was denounced to the captain of the Guelph party in Florence for failing to keep a weir in the Arno near Ponte a Signa in proper repair. His son Mainetto sold this weir to the monks of the great Badia[70] a Settimo, who in 1313 also bought an island in the river from Giovanni and Ponzardo, sons of Mainetto. Like so many of the great Florentine houses the Pulci failed in 1321 and villa and lands were seized by the cardinal Napoleone Orsini, one of the creditors. His heirs sold the estate to the Marquis Rinnucini who enlarged and beautified Castel-Pulci, which was bought by the government some fifty years ago.

Luigi Pulci, born on the 3rd of December 1431, was the author of the _Morgante Maggiore_, the first burlesque romance in European literature and the prototype of that form of poetry which Ariosto brought to perfection. His two elder brothers were also poets; Luca wrote the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_ and the _Driadeo d’Amore_, and was considered by Varchi superior to Luigi, while Giovio calls him _poeta nobile_. Bernardo, the eldest, was among the first to write pastoral poetry in the vulgar tongue; he also made a good translation of the Eclogues of Virgil, and wrote a poem on the passion of Christ and many plays. His wife Antonia was a poetess of no mean fame in the same style. Verino celebrates the three brothers thus:

“Carminibus patriis notissima Pulcia proles.
Qui non hanc urbem Musarem dicat amicam,
Si tres prodicat frates domus una poetas?”

Luigi Pulci was an intimate friend of the Medici and formed one of the brilliant company surrounding Lorenzo il Magnifico, who mentions him in his poem on hawking:

“Luigi Pulci ov’è, che non si sente?
Egli se n’andò dianzi in quel boschetto,
Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente,
Vorrà fantasticar forse un sonetto;”

Many were the jokes made by Lorenzo’s witty chaplain, Ser Matteo di Franco, a canon of the cathedral of Florence, and a favourite of Pope Innocent VIII, on the name of his friend Pulci (Pulex, a flea). He used to say of Luigi, who was very thin, “famine is as naturally depicted on his countenance as though it were a work by Giotto.” They wrote facetious sonnets to each other which were published in the fifteenth century and immediately placed on the Index, but a reprint of this rare volume was made by Marchese De Rossi in 1759. Both were admirers and intimate friends of Angelo Poliziano (to whom, by the way, some have erroneously attributed the _Morgante Maggiore_).

Luigi Pulci’s poem, which Lord Byron admired sufficiently to translate, tells of the hatred borne by the perfidious Ganellone to the chaste and generous Orlando and the other Christian Paladins. Charlemagne, deceived by Ganellone, whose envy, dissimulation, feigned humility and capacity for lying is admirably portrayed, sends him to Spain to treat for the cession of a kingdom for Orlando with King Marsilio. Instead of this he plots with the Spaniards for the destruction of Orlando, who is killed at Roncesvalle. Morgante the giant, after being baptised by Orlando becomes his faithful squire; the other giant Maggutte is a jovial pagan, laughing at everybody and everything, who ends his life in peals of loud laughter. The poem was composed for the amusement of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the accomplished mother of Lorenzo de’ Medici, herself a poetess. “Luigi Pulci,” writes Symonds, “assumed the tone of a street-singer, opening each canto with the customary invocation to the Madonna or a paraphrase of some church collect, and dismissing his audience at the close with grateful thanks or brief good wishes.

“But Pulci was no mere _Canta-storie_. The popular style served but as a cloak to cover his subtle-witted satire and his mocking levity. Tuscan humour keeps up an _obbligato_ accompaniment throughout the poem. Sometimes this humour is in harmony with the plebeian spirit of the old Italian romances; sometimes it turns aside and treats it as a theme of ridicule. In reading the _Morgante_ we must bear in mind that it was written canto by canto to be recited in the palace of the Via Larga, at the table where Poliziano and Ficino gathered with Michelangelo Buonarroti and Cristoforo Landino. Whatever topics may from time to time have occupied that brilliant circle, were reflected in its stanzas; and this alone suffices to account for its tender episodes and its burlesque extravagances, for the satiric picture of Margutte and the serious discourses of the devil Astarotte. The external looseness of construction and the intellectual unity of the poem, are both attributable to these circumstances. Passing by rapid transitions from grave to gay, from pathos to cynicism, from theological speculations to ribaldry, it is at one and the same time a mirror of the popular taste which suggested the form, and also of the courtly wits who listened to it laughing. The _Morgante_ is no _naïve_ production of a simple age, but the artistic plaything of a cultivated and critical society, entertaining its leisure with old-world stories, accepting some for their beauty’s sake in seriousness, and turning others into nonsense for pure mirth.”[71]

Close to Castel-Pulci, on the spur of a hill overlooking the Valle Morta (a name probably alluding to a battle fought there in 1113) on one side and the valley of the Arno on the other, is Monte Cascioli, now a farm-house, once the strong castle of the powerful Lords of Fucecchio. Here Count Lottario and his mother Countess Gemma held court in 1006 and gave large donations to the Badia a Settimo. Their descendant Ugo joined Ruberto Tedesco, Vicario of Tuscany under Henry III, against the Florentines, who marched out and fought a pitched battle in which Ruberto was killed and Monte Cascioli was stormed and destroyed.

From the terrace of Castel-Pulci one looks down upon the broad and fertile plain of the Arno, whose course is marked by lines of shimmering poplars, and the fine mass of Mount Morello rises in the distance. Close to the river bank the beautiful campanile, attributed by Vasari to Niccolò Pisano, of the ancient Badia a Settimo stands out against the green background. The Pulci once owned a strong castle near by of which no vestige remains, but the Badia had been a dependency of the great Lords of Fucecchio since 940, and was inhabited by Cluniacense monks, whose behaviour became so scandalous that in 1063 Count Gugliemo Bulgaro appealed to his friend St Giovan Gualberto for aid, and the saintly abbot of Vallombrosa introduced his own rule. Soon afterwards, by his order, St Peter Igneus went through the ordeal by fire at Settimo in the presence of a large concourse of people. The following inscriptions may still be read bearing witness to the fact:—

IGNEUS HIC PETRUS MEDIOS PERTRANSIIT IGNES,
FLAMMARUM VICTOR, SED MAGIS HAERESEOS.
HOC IN LOCO, MIRACULO S. JOHANNIS GUALBERTO,
QUIDAM FUERE CONFUTATI HAERETICI, MLXX.

In 1236 Gregory IX, took the abbey and monastery under the immediate protection of the Holy See and gave it to the Cistercians, whose conduct was so exemplary that the Signoria of Florence entrusted them with the administration of the taxes, the maintenance of the city walls and bridges and finally gave the great seal into their keeping. The monks were made exempt from taxes and their revenue must have been large, as every abbot paid a thousand golden florins to the Pope on his investiture. The tall gatetower, once connected with the strong walls built round the monastery by the Republic of Florence, is very fine and a large and curious _alto-relievo_ built up of brick and mortar, of Our Lord and two saints, is above the closed-up door. Under the feet of the Christ is a slab with the lily of Florence and an illegible inscription. Below that again is written—

“Anno Domini MCCXXXVI, S.S. Dmn. N. Gregorius IX dedit hoc Monasterium de Septimo Ordin. Cirterc. cum esset liberum et exemptum ab omni regio patronatu, quod in plena libertate a dicto Ordine pacifice possidetur.”

Badia a Settimo must have been magnificent with its moat and three other towers, each of which had a drawbridge. Now much of the ancient structure lies under fifteen feet of mud deposited by the perpetual inundations of the Arno, the monks’ refectory has been divided into cellars, the fine old abbey-church with its solemn, almost Egyptian-looking, columns is a _tinaia_ where wine is made and the original height can only be seen by an excavation which has been dug round one of the columns. The monastery is a private villa, and the lovely cloister with its slender pillars, beautifully carved capitals and expanse of grass serves as a playground for the children. The present church was built in the thirteenth century at right angles to the ancient abbey-church and nearer to the campanile, on artificially raised ground. The steps which led up to the door are already deep under the earth and the bases of the columns supporting the loggia in front of the church are more than half buried. The high altar is a fine piece of _pietra dura_ work, and round the top of the choir is a pretty frieze by one of the Della Robbia, of four-winged heads of angels alternating with a kneeling lamb holding a banner, emblem of the guild of wool manufacturers. In the left hand chapel is a small ambrey, or receptacle for the holy oil, by Desiderio da Settignano, of most exquisite design and workmanship; the walls of the chapel are frescoed by Giovanni di San Giovanni, and above the altar is kept a silver casket containing the bones of St Quentin. The saint was beheaded at Paris a thousand or more years ago and transported his bones by some miracle to a church on the opposite side of the river; not liking his quarters he moved in 1187 to the high altar of the ancient abbey-church, but still dissatisfied he placed the silver casket every morning in this chapel, which was the greatest miracle of all as the chapel was only built late in the thirteenth century. “And here he still is,” said the sacristan, “but without his head, which he could not find when he left Paris.” A short corridor behind the high altar leads into the old chapel of Lapi des Spinis, built according to an inscription in 1315. Dim traces of frescoes by some follower of Giotto are still to be seen, but the chapel is so silted up with mud that the present floor very nearly touches the level of the spring of the groined arches of the roof.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Abbey.

[71] J. A. Symonds, _Renaissance in Italy._ _Italian Literature._ Part I. p. 440.

By ANONIMO.

(_Villa di Poggio Gherardo_).]

By LEONE LEONI.

(_Villa di Gamberaia_).]

By ANONIMO.

(_Villa di Rusciano_).]

VILLA DI POGGIO GHERARDO

Nearly two miles due east of Florence, above the Settignano road, stands the old castellated villa of Poggio Gherardo on an eminence which overlooks the valley of the Arno. In 1321 Meglino di Jacopo di Magaldo Magaldi died, leaving by will part of this ancient possession of his family, _i.e._ “the podere of Poggio and the buildings above the said podere where now are, and have been in times gone by, the Loggia, the Tower, the Well, the Water-channels, the Courtyard and all the Garden and Orchard, with the Fields and Pergole which are enclosed and surrounded in part with walls, &c.”, to the Congregation of the Visitation; with the obligation to build an oratorio or chapel in the said house in honour of St Zebedeus, and to support a resident priest to say mass every day for the repose of his soul. Also the priest on each anniversary of the death of Magaldo was to invite all the members of the house of Magaldi to dinner. They, however, brought a lawsuit against the Congregation of the Visitation, who appealed to the Cardinal Legate of Pope John XXII, (who was at Avignon) setting forth that by the time they had paid the expenses of the lawsuit with borrowed money nothing would be left, and asking permission to sell the estate which many would like to buy, _cum sit in loco carisimo situatum_. Thus they would be able to pay everything and to carry out the wishes of the pious Magaldo as far as the daily mass was concerned. So the villa and land was sold to Messer Bivigliano del già Manetto de’ Baroncelli and his brother Messer Silvestro for 3100 golden florins on the 14th January 1331. The Baroncelli did not long enjoy their purchase. They, with the Buonaccorsi, were interested in the great banking house of Acciajuoli which was declared insolvent in 1345. Poggio must have belonged to the Albizzi for a few years, as Andrea di Sennino Baldesi bought the villa and one podere from them in 1354, his brother Baldese having already purchased other parts of the estate from the Baroncelli five years before. In 1400 the Zati became lords of Poggio and in 1433 they sold it to Gherardo di Bartolomeo Gherardi. He changed the name from Palagio del Poggio to Poggio Gherardi, or Gherardo (it is called both in the archives), and his descendants held the place for 455 years. Mr Henry James Ross bought it in 1888 and has made its name known as the home of a fine collection of orchids.

Many illustrious men did the Gherardi give to the service of Florence. Gherardo was three times Gonfalonier of the city; his son Francesco was a brave soldier and led the troops of the Republic against the Siennese in 1495 when he stormed Montepulciano and took Giovanni Savelli, their Roman captain prisoner, whom he brought, with many nobles and captains of Siena, in triumph to Florence. His brother Bernardo Gherardi, Gonfalonier in 1434, was a strong partisan of the Medici, and his influence caused the exile of Cosimo de’ Medici to be cancelled. The Republic sent him as ambassador to Venice, Ferrara and Rome, and when he died in 1459 he was buried at the public expense. Seven different Gherardi were Gonfaloniers of Justice, and the name occurs frequently in the old history of Florence.[72]

Tradition says the old castle stood many a siege and that Sir John Hawkwood was guilty of destroying the eastern wing, only partially rebuilt some two or three hundred years ago. It probably was one of the frontier castles which in ancient times defended Florence from the people of Arezzo and of the Casentino. The line of castles, with their towers, can still be traced, from Castel di Poggio perched high on the hill above past Vincigliata and Poggio Gherardo, across the valley and up the opposite bank of the Arno.

Poggio Gherardo stands about 300 feet above the plain. From the gate, with its marble busts of the four seasons, a winding road flanked by roses on either side—a glory to behold in springtime—leads up through olive-groves and vineyards to the spinny which crowns the hill and protects the villa from the north wind. Over the door are the arms of the Gherardi and the entrance hall is the “Loggia” mentioned in the _Decameron_, the arches of which were built up two or three hundred years ago. In the courtyard the well, eighty feet deep, “of coldest water” still exists; but alas, the “jocund paintings” in the rooms have disappeared.

From the southern terrace garden the view is wonderful, especially if you see a purple, orange and blood-red sunset away to the west, behind the mountains of Modena and the cloud-like white masses of Carrara. Florence lies mapped out at one’s feet, with Galileo’s tower, San Miniato, Monte Uliveto and Bellosguardo keeping watch over her. When the air is clear the point of Monte Nero above Leghorn can be seen in the far west, while to the east Vallombrosa forms a background for Settignano and the house of Michelangelo—ninety-three miles as the crow flies. The course of the Arno in the valley below is marked by rows of tall poplars, and hundreds of villas, shining brightly in the sun, are dotted about in the plain and on the hillsides, while line after line of opalesque hills fade away towards the fertile vale of the Chianti. Eastwards are Monte Pilli and the Incontro, so-called because St Francis and St Dominic are supposed to have met there, and beyond them again, as already said, is Vallombrosa.

From the eastern terrace one looks down on the small streamlet Mensola, celebrated in Boccaccio’s Ninfale Fiesolane, rushing down to meet her lover Affrico, who comes from the Fiesole hills on the west to join his tears with hers. Near the banks of the Mensola stands one of the oldest churches in Tuscany, San Martino a Mensola. The _body_ of the Irish Saint Andrew, who founded a monastery here in the seventh century, lies under the high altar clothed in old brocaded robes, while his _ashes_ are supposed to be under a side altar in an exquisitely painted wooden box; through the small iron grating one can see, by the light of a taper, beautiful slim youths with curled hair walking in a garden of orange trees laden with big fruit. In the church are some fine pictures, one attributed to Orcagna was given by the Zati, once lords of Poggio Gherardo. The old, square, machicolated castle has always been identified by students with the first “palagio” in which the joyous company of seven ladies and three youths took refuge when they fled from the plague in Florence in 1348.

“Wandering in idleness, but not in folly,
Sate down in the high grass and in the shade
Of many a tree sun-proof—day after day,
When all was still and nothing to be heard
But the cicala’s voice among the olives,
Relating in a ring, to banish care,
Their hundred tales.
Round the green hill they went,
Round underneath—first to a splendid house,
Gherardi, as an old tradition runs,
That on the left, just rising from the vale;
A place for luxury—the painted rooms,
The open galleries and middle court
Not unprepared, fragrant and gay with flowers.”[73]

In 1740 Roberto Gherardi wrote a long-winded but curious account of his own villa and of many others on the Fiesolean hills called _La Villeggiatura di Majano_. It has never been printed, but if for nothing else his MS. is valuable as suggesting that Giovanni Boccaccio was born near the banks of the Mensola. He writes, “... our celebrated master of Tuscan eloquence, Messer Giovanni di Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo, who in his earliest days, and afterwards in the flower of his youth passed much time in a small villa with a podere belonging to his father but a few paces below the hamlet of Corbignano, which podere on account of the rill dividing it which runs into the Mensola, and of the specified frontiers, and the two parishes San Martino a Mensola and Santa Maria a Settignano, in whose jurisdiction it lies, can only be, when you study it well, the villa of Signor Berti at Corbignano at present in the possession of Signor Ottavio Ruggeri, as can be verified by the contract of sale existing in the archives of Florence of the 18th May 1336 when our Boccaccio was twenty-three years old. I believe that under the guise of Ameto, Boccaccio tells us he was born among the neighbouring hills of Majano. In this forest Ameto, a wandering youth, used to visit the Fauns and Dryads who inhabited there; he, remembering that perhaps he was born in the neighbouring hills, was constrained thereto by a certain carnal love, and honoured them sometimes with pious offerings.” Villa Boccaccio was let out in small apartments to poor people for years; it now belongs to Mr Kenworthy Browne, and traces of ancient frescoes were found in some of the rooms when he restored it.

As before said Poggio Gherardo is generally identified as the place Boccaccio had in his mind when he describes how on a Wednesday morning “as the day was breaking, the ladies with various of their serving-maids, and the three youths with three of their followers, left the town and went on their way; they had not gone more than two short miles from the city when they arrived at the place they had already decided on.[74] This said place was on a small height, removed a little distance from our roads on every side, full of various trees and shrubs in full greenery and most pleasant to behold. On the brow of the hill was a palace with a fine and spacious courtyard in the middle, and with loggie and halls and rooms, all, and each one in itself beautiful, and ornamented tastefully with jocund paintings; surrounded with grass plots and marvellous gardens, and with wells of coldest water, and cellars of rare wines; a thing more suited to curious topers than to sober and virtuous women.”

Here Pampinea was crowned queen with “an honourable and beautiful garland of bays,” and here she commanded Panfilo to begin the series of immortal tales known all the world over as the _Decameron_. At the end of the first day Pampinea ceded the garland, emblem of royalty, to “the discreet maiden Filomena” and the joyous company went slowly down to a stream (the Mensola) of clear water, “which descended from a hill and flowed through a valley shaded by many trees, amidst live rocks and green grass. Here bare-footed and with bare arms they went down into the water and disported themselves, then the hour of supper being at hand they returned to the palace and supped with great contentment.” Music, singing and dancing whiled away the hours until the queen was pleased to command the torches to be lit and that everyone should seek repose.