stands the old brown villa of Rusciano, which even in the days of
Sacchetti had the reputation of changing masters more frequently than
any other in Tuscany. It is first mentioned in 785, when Charlemagne
is said to have granted the estate to the church of San Miniato a
Monte; three centuries later Pope Nicholas II, gave it to the hospital
of St Eusebius, popularly known as San Sebbo; then it belonged to two
sisters, Buoninsegna and Princia, who in 1267 sold the house and lands
to the nuns of San Jacopo in Pian di Ripoli. After passing through
several other hands it was bought by Luca Pitti, who crowned the
beautiful hill with what Vasari calls “a luxurious and superb palace,”
built, or rather adapted and enlarged for him in 1434 by Brunelleschi,
to render it a fitting residence for one who was Gonfalonier of
Florence and at the height of his prosperity.
Herr Cornel von Fabriczy[27] considers that only the eastern side of
the villa is Brunelleschi’s work, the western being the original
building, while the southern façade dates from late in the sixteenth
century. One of the glories of Rusciano, much written about by
critics, is a most beautiful window looking into the courtyard, but
lately covered in. It is said by some to be by Brunelleschi, but
the exaggerated consoles ornamented with acanthus leaves, and the
pillars at the sides with Corinthian capitals, are not like the work
of the great master. The garlands of flowers at the sides, tied in
here and there, remind one of those on the monument to Marsuppini by
Desiderio da Settignano, as does the delicate frieze at the top. Herr
von Fabriczy suggests that this lovely window, which recalls those of
the palaces at Urbino and at Gubbio, may perhaps have been designed
by Luciano da Laurana, architect to Federigo di Montefeltre, to whom,
as we shall see, the villa belonged for a short time. Anyhow this
one richly ornamented piece of architecture contrasts strangely with
the absolute simplicity, almost amounting to bareness, of everything
else in the courtyard. Dr Carl von Stegmann, in his _Architekten der
Renaissance_ thinks the frieze and the shape of the capitals are in the
style of Desiderio da Settignano, while the garlands of flowers remind
him more of the work of Benedetto da Majano. The rooms of the villa are
of huge size, and many still retain their fine old wooden ceilings,
gigantic beams resting on simply-shaped consoles with curved outlines.
[Illustration: (Detail of carved window frame)]
[Illustration: (Drawing of overlook of town from a garden)]
Luca Pitti would have been a happier man had he taken to heart the wise
words of Cosimo de’ Medici. “You,” said Cosimo, “strive towards the
indefinite, I towards the definite; you aspire to reach the heavens
with your ladder, I place mine on the earth so that I may not climb so
high as to fall: and if I desire that the honour and reputation of my
house should surpass yours, it seems to me but just and natural that
I should favour rather mine own than what belongs to you. Nevertheless
let us do as big dogs, which meeting, sniff one at the other and then,
both having teeth, separate and go their ways: you to attend to your
concerns, I to see after mine own.” But the character of Luca was
correctly gauged by that acute and charming lady, Alessandra Macinghi,
married to a Strozzi, who calls him, in her letters to her exiled sons
after their father’s death which give so vivid a picture of what wives
and mothers endured in the good old times, “a vain ambitious man and a
weathercock, moreover badly surrounded.” After intriguing against the
Medici, and even plotting to assassinate Cosimo’s son Piero, Luca Pitti
abandoned the anti-Medicean faction and accepted pardon at the hands of
Piero, after which his old friends scorned him and avoided meeting him
in the streets.
In the summer of 1472 the Gonfalonier of Florence, Tanai de’ Nerli,
received the Captain-General of the Florentine army, Count Federigo
di Montefeltre, outside the city gates and escorted him, amid the
acclamations of the citizens, to the Piazza, where the magistrates
thanked him for his services in conquering rebellious Volterra, and
presented him with a richly caparisoned charger and a silver helmet
studded with jewels and chased in gold by Pollajuolo, with Hercules
trampling on a griffin (the device of Volterra) as its crest. The
grateful Republic also bought Rusciano of Luca Pitti and bestowed it
on their victorious general together with the freedom of the city. But
he does not seem to have inhabited his Florentine villa long, for in
the following year it was let to Giuliano Gondi, and towards the end of
the fifteenth century Federigo’s successor, Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino,
sold it to the Frescobaldi. After this Rusciano changed hands every few
years and was owned by the Covoni, Usimbardi, Capponi, Gerini and many
other less illustrious Florentine families, until in 1825 it came into
the possession of an Englishman, Mr Baring, and after three more sales
the noble old villa now belongs to Baron von Stumm.
The Baron is a master in the art of landscape gardening, and with
a northerner’s love for trees has transformed the grounds into a
veritable earthly paradise, whence lovely views of Florence, framed
by rare conifers and bays, are like so many glimpses of a fairy city.
When seen on a morning with deep snow lying on every mountain, while a
pale tinge of colour among the vineyards tells of coming spring in the
valley of the Arno, and the city, usually so brown and strongly defined
upon the river banks, shines white as though reflecting the dazzling
snow peaks around, one is tempted to exclaim with Rogers,
“Of all the fairest cities of the Earth
None is so fair as Florence. ’Tis a gem
Of purest ray.”
All the town lies below us, but unlike the vast unbroken bird’s-eye
view from Bellosguardo or San Miniato, here we only feel her presence,
and while listening to the midday bells we see, between two clumps of
slender bamboo, Palazzo Vecchio looming like some enchanter’s castle
out of the thick atmosphere and suffused with rosy hues. The mysterious
feeling of the building is enhanced, for the bay and olive trees hide
the houses around it and nothing of the modern town is visible.
Such a city, seen from a terrace where a column of purest marble makes
the rose tints of the sky more clearly felt, may well inspire her
people to weave legends, even in this century of ours, as to her having
been built by angels in the night. Between the cypresses the Duomo,
sometimes so russet brown above the city it is guarding, to-day is
toned and mellowed in the winter sunlight, and the downward markings of
its cupola shine like ribs of alabaster. Whiter still and fairer rises
the campanile “coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea
shell.”
The terraced garden of Rusciano, where granite columns with capitals
encircled by dolphins rise amidst palms and magnolias, lies on the
southern side of the villa facing the heights of Monticci.
A watch-tower on the slopes, a little village in the plain with pointed
bell-tower rising above the jutting roofs of peasant houses low-lying
among the fruit trees, hills palely outlined, their cypress-covered
summits seen against still paler distance, pine trees along the valley
wreathed in mist and nearer, olive trees reflecting, like so many
mirrors, the radiant hues of the morning sunlight on each of their
small pointed leaves—all these things and many more we see from the
garden of Rusciano.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] _Filippo Brunelleschi, sein Leben und seine Werke_, von Cornel von
Fabriczy. Stuttgard, 1892.
[Illustration: VILLA DI POGGIO IMPERIALE.]
[Illustration: (Drawing of gardent of Villa Di Poggio Imperiale)]
VILLA DI POGGIO IMPERIALE
About a mile outside Porta Romana on the heights of Arcetri stands the
fine Villa Poggio Imperiale, now a school for girls. Formerly it was
called Poggio Baroncelli, from the rich and powerful family of that
name who owned large possessions on this side of Florence, and turned
an old castle into a dwelling-house; but they failed in 1487, when
the villa and much of the land belonging to it became the property
of Agnolo Pandolfini, whose descendants sold it to Piero d’Alamanno
Salviati. In 1548 the Salviati were declared rebels and Cosimo I seized
all their possessions.
Cosimo had such an affection for Tommaso, one of the descendants of
the Baroncelli, that he insisted on his living in the Medici palace
in Via Larga (now palazzo Riccardi, Via Cavour). When in 1569 Pius V
gave the Duke Cosimo I, in spite of strenuous opposition on the part
of the Emperor Maximilian, the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany, Tommaso
Baroncelli rode out to meet him on his return from the coronation at
Rome. “Such was his joy,” writes Cosimo Baroncelli (son of Tommaso) in
a manuscript history of his family, “on seeing that great Prince his
most gracious Lord, that he fainted and would have fallen from his
horse if the attendants had not quickly supported him and lifted him
from the saddle. They placed him on a low wall near the fountain of San
Gaggio where he died, to the very great grief of H.H. and of the whole
court; he being singularly beloved for his kind and courteous manners.
He died in the year 1569 on the 21st March, the day of St Benedict the
Abbot.”
There is a tradition that a duel took place close to the villa in 1312
between four Florentines and four Germans during the siege of Florence
by the Emperor Henry VII, but the one between Lodovico Martelli and
Giovanni Bandini is historical and has been minutely described by
Varchi. “Lodovico di Giovan Francesco Martelli, a youth of great
courage, having a secret enmity against Giovanni Bandini, seized a
favourable occasion of fighting and if necessary dying, for the love
of his city; he sent him a challenge, written by Messer Salvestro
Aldobrandini, setting forth that he (Bandini) and all Florentines
serving in the enemy’s ranks were traitors to their country, and that
he was ready to prove this in the lists fighting hand to hand, leaving
the choice of place, of arms and whether on foot or on horseback to
him.... Giovanni, who lacked not courage and abounded in wit, tried
to evade fighting in so bad a cause, and replied with more prudence
than truth, that he was in the enemy’s camp to visit certain friends
and not to fight against his country which he loved as well as anyone.
This, whether true or false, ought to have sufficed Lodovico; but he
being desirous at all costs to cross swords with Giovanni replied in
such manner, that not to fail in the honour of a gentleman, on which
he particularly prided himself, Giovanni was obliged to accept; it
was arranged that each should choose a companion. Giovanni ... chose
Bertino di Carlo Aldobrandini, a youth whose beard had but just begun
to sprout ... Lodovico chose Dante di Guido da Castiglione, who
accepted the risk solely for love of his country.
“Lodovico and Dante quitted Florence on the 2nd day of March (1530)
leaving the Piazza San Michele Berteldi in the following order—to
recount everything in minute fashion. In front of them were two pages
clothed in red and white, on horses whose caparisons were of white
leather, and then two other pages mounted on great chargers and dressed
in the like manner; followed by two trumpeters blowing continuously.
After these came Captain Giovanni da Vinci, a youth of extraordinary
stature, the second of Dante, and Pagolo Spinelli, a citizen and an old
soldier of great experience, second of Lodovico, and Messer Vitello
Vitelli, umpire of both.... Then followed the two champions on fine
Turkish horses of marvellous beauty and value. They wore tunics of
red satin with sleeves of the same slashed with lace, their breeches
were of red satin laced with white and lined with cloth of silver; on
their heads were skull-caps of red satin and hats of red silk with
white plumes. Six servants dressed in the same fashion as the pages on
horseback walked by the stirrups of the knights ... and in their wake
were several captains and brave soldiers with many of the Florentine
militia, who having eaten with them that morning bore them company as
far as the gate.... They followed the Via di Piazza, by Borgo Santo
Apostolo, down Parione, crossing the Carraja bridge to the San Friano
gate where was their baggage; twenty-one mules laden with all and every
sort of thing they might want in the way of food or arms for man and
horse. Not to be beholden to the enemy for anything, they carried with
them bread, wine, oats, straw, wood, meat of all kinds, every sort of
bird and of fish and of pastry, tents fitted with every convenience and
furniture they could need even to water. They took a priest, a doctor,
a barber, a butler, a cook and a scullion with them. Going out of the
gate with all this baggage they went along under the walls, until close
to the gate of San Pier Gattolini [now Porta Romana] they turned to
the right ... where was the last of the enemy’s trenches, and then
proceeded to Baroncelli [Poggio Imperiale], the whole camp running to
see them, it having been agreed that until they stood before the Prince
of Orange no shot should be fired from any artillery, either large or
small on either side, and this was faithfully observed.
“At twelve on the day of St Gregory, which fell on a Saturday, they
fought in two stockades.[28] ... They fought in their shirts, that is
breeches and no jackets, with the right sleeve cut off at the elbow, a
sword and a short mailed glove on the sword hand and nothing on their
heads.... Thus it was chosen by Giovanni to gainsay the opinion held of
him in Florence, that he had more prudence than valour and behaved with
more cunning than courage.
“Dante having caused his red beard which descended nearly to his waist
to be shaved, attacked Bertino, and in the first round received a
wound in his right arm and a slight touch on the mouth; he was then
assailed with such fury by his adversary that without being able to
shield himself he got three wounds on his left arm, one severe, and two
slashes, so that if Bertino had continued to press him as he should
have done, he was in such condition that he would have been forced to
yield; being unable to hold his sword in only one hand he took it with
both, and keenly watching the movements of his adversary saw how he
rushed towards him with the utmost fury and inconsiderateness ... so
advancing and extending both arms he drove his sword into Bertino’s
mouth between the tongue and the uvula in such fashion that his right
eye swelled forthwith; thus he who just before had boastingly promised
to die a thousand times sooner than yield once, either vanquished by
the extreme pain ... or else out of his senses, asked for quarter,
to the very great displeasure of the Prince [of Orange] ... and died
the following night at the sixth hour. Then Dante, to encourage his
companion, shouted twice aloud ‘Victory, Victory,’ not being able, by
reason of the laws agreed upon between them to otherwise help him.
“Lodovico at the first trumpet blast attacked Giovanni with incredible
fury; but Giovanni, who was a master of fence and did not allow himself
to be carried away by anger or any other passion, gave him a cut above
the eyebrow, the blood from which began to impede his sight; therefore
he with increased rage tried three times to seize his opponent’s sword
with his left hand and wrest it from him, but Giovanni turning it
quickly and drawing it hard towards him, always pulled it out of his
hand and wounded him in three places in the said left hand; so that the
more Lodovico tried to clear his eye from blood with his left hand in
order to see light, the more he besmeared himself; nevertheless with
his right hand he made a ferocious pass at Giovanni which passed more
than a span beyond him, but did him no other harm than a slight scratch
beneath the left breast. Then did Giovanni deal him a right-handed
blow on the head, which he not being able to ward off in other fashion
parried with his wounded left hand and tried once more to seize the
sword. Failing in this and being severely wounded, he placed both hands
to the hilt of his sword and resting it against his breast rushed at
Giovanni to run him through; but the latter, agile as he was strong,
sprang back, and at the same moment dealt him a blow on the head
saying: ‘If thou wouldst not die yield thyself to me.’ Lodovico, unable
to see and wounded in several places, answered: ‘I yield myself to
the Marquis del Guasto,’[29] but Giovanni insisting he yielded unto
him.”[30]
Lodovico Martelli died of his wounds twenty-four days after the duel,
and it was solemnly decreed that his portrait should be placed in the
Uffizi gallery among those of men famous for their patriotic virtues.
Patriotism had, however, little to do with the duel, which was fought
for love of Marietta Ricci, wife of Niccolò Benintendi.[31]
In 1565 Cosimo I gave the villa to his favourite daughter Isabella,
married to Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, with faculty
to leave it by will to her children; if she died intestate it was to
revert to the crown. Eleven years later she was strangled one summer’s
night by her husband at their villa Cerreti Guidi, and in the following
October her brother, the Grand Duke Francesco I, confirmed his
brother-in-law in the possession of Poggio Baroncelli.
In 1619 it became the property of the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena of
Austria, wife to Cosimo II. She bought it from Paolo Giordano Orsini,
who was in want of money to pay the dower of his sister Camilla,
engaged to Marcantonio Borghese, Prince of Sulmona. At the same time
the Grand Duchess bought several farms to enlarge the grounds and make
the broad carriage road leading up to the villa. She also planted the
ilexes and cypresses which are now such a feature in the landscape.
It became her favourite residence, and here Claudia de’ Medici, her
sister-in-law, was married to Federigo Ubaldo della Rovere, eldest son
to the Duke of Urbino, with less pomp than was usually displayed by the
Medici owing to the recent death of the Grand Duke Cosimo II.
Maria Maddalena determined to enlarge and beautify her villa, and
chose Giulio Parigi as her architect, changing its name from Poggio
Baroncelli to Poggio Imperiale. She and Christine of Lorraine (mother,
grandmother and guardians of the young Grand Duke Ferdinando II)
entertained Prince Stanislao of Poland there in 1625 with the tragedy
of St Ursula, a ball, and a ballet on horseback performed in an
amphitheatre built for the purpose in front of the villa.
Ferdinando II married his cousin Vittoria, only child of Claudia de’
Medici and Federigo della Rovere, who died soon after the birth of his
daughter. Brought up at Poggio Imperiale by her aunt Maria Maddalena,
Vittoria bought the villa from her husband after his mother’s death for
62,500 scudi and spent large sums in enlarging and embellishing the
place; several of the rooms added by her were frescoed by Volterrano
(Baldassare Franceschini). When her half-brothers (by her mother’s
second marriage with the Arch Duke Leopold of Austria) came to Florence
she gave a magnificent entertainment there, including the favourite
Florentine pastime of the _Buratto_ or Saracen. Loud laughter greeted
the unhappy wight whose lance missed the proper spot on the breast of
Buratto and was then knocked off his horse by the staff unerringly
wielded by the wooden statue.
[Illustration: (Drawing of two women walking out of a stone gateway,
with statues and trees in the background.)]
Violante of Bavaria, wife of Prince Ferdinando, son of Cosimo III,
lived occasionally at Poggio Imperiale, and it was frequently visited
by her brother-in-law Gastone, the last of the Medicean Grand
Dukes, who inherited all the vices but none of the talent of his
house. Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine, his successor, had a particular
predilection for the imperial villa and spent 1,300,000 francs on
enlarging it and building immense stables (now cavalry barracks). When
he, on the death of his brother in 1790, became Emperor of Austria,
his second son Ferdinando III succeeded to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany,
and gave hospitality at Poggio Imperiale to the King of Sardinia and
his wife, who had been compelled to quit Piedmont by the revolution.
Charles Emanuel IV and Marie Clotilde arrived on the 19th January
1799, only to be driven out after a month of quiet and repose. They
fled to Sardinia, and Napoleon having abolished Tuscany with a stroke
of a pen, the Grand Duke took refuge with his brother in Vienna. A
new kingdom—Etruria—was then created, with Lodovico of Bourbon, son
of the Duke of Parma, as king. He died in 1803, leaving his young
widow as regent for his little son, and Poggio Imperiale became her
favourite residence. She added the rustic loggia and was beginning
other improvements when Napoleon, unmoved by her tears and entreaties,
swept Etruria off the map of nations and the poor Queen Regent and
her small boy were driven into exile. A new mistress now ruled in the
great villa—Napoleon’s sister, the brilliant Elise Bonaparte married
to Captain Felice Baciocchi, who had been created Prince of Lucca and
Piombino; and she gave balls and festivals to celebrate her brother’s
victories in the villa which owed most of its splendour to Austrian
princesses. Her grandeur was, however, short-lived; in 1814 she left
Poggio Imperiale at dead of night, and Ferdinando III returned to
Tuscany.
Three years later a royal company assembled in the “Villa of five
hundred rooms,” as Poggio Imperiale was commonly called, to say
farewell to the Arch Duchess Leopoldine of Austria who was to embark at
Leghorn as the bride of the Crown Prince of Portugal and the Brazils.
Her two sisters, one married to Prince Leopold of Naples the other to
Napoleon, then a prisoner at St Helena, met her there together with the
Princess of the Brazils who had come to receive her son’s future wife
at the hands of Prince Metternich.
In the autumn of 1822, when Carlo Alberto, Prince of Carignano, that
strange compound of hesitation and daring, religion and mysticism,
came as an exile to Florence, his father-in-law Ferdinando III lent
him Poggio Imperiale, and here his son Victor Emanuel, the future King
of United Italy, narrowly escaped being burnt to death as a baby.
His nurse, driven distracted by the mosquitoes tried to burn them on
the mosquito-net and set fire to the bed. Snatching up the child she
clasped him to her breast and saved his life at the sacrifice of her
own. When the “Re Galant’ Uomo” entered Florence on the 15th April
1860, his first visit was to Poggio Imperiale to see the room he had
inhabited as a child, and the apartments occupied by his parents.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Lodovico Martelli and Giovanni Bandini in one, Dante da
Castiglione and Bertino Aldobrandini in the other.
[29] Colonel in command of the Spanish infantry.
[30] Varchi. _Storia Fiorentina._ Firenze, 1836–1841. Vol. II. p. 302.
[31] See Letter XVIII. Busini.
[Illustration: (Drawing of S shaped stairway
leading from house to garden)]
VILLA DI LAPPEGGI
The hamlet of Lappeggi lies some six miles south-east of Florence in
the picturesque valley of the Ema, and here the Ricasoli had a villa
which in 1569 they sold to Francesco de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I.
Francesco I was succeeded by his brother Ferdinando I, who, in order
to avoid any controversy with Don Antonio de’ Medici, the supposed
illegitimate son of the Grand Duke Francesco and Bianca Cappello,[32]
gave him a life interest in a considerable share of the family
property, Lappeggi among the rest. On the death of Don Antonio in 1604
the Grand Duke again came into possession and bestowed it on the Orsini
family. Alessandro, last of the Orsini, died about thirty years later,
and once more Lappeggi reverted to the crown when Don Mattias de’
Medici had it for his life, but seldom lived there, as he was governor
of Siena. Finally the villa became the property of Cardinal
Francesco Maria de’ Medici, whose favourite place of residence it was.
[Illustration: VILLA DI LAPPEGGI.]