Part 8

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.