Part 9

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._