for a villa, and choosing the most magnificent the Cardinal asked what
the cost would be; after a few moments of reflection Ferri answered
forty thousand scudi for solid good building. “And if I only desire to
spend thirty thousand, and yet have my villa built according to this
design, how long would it last?” said the Cardinal. On the architect
replying that he would guarantee it for eighteen years, the Cardinal
exclaimed, “Eighteen years? That is enough; that will serve my time.”
Lappeggi is celebrated in the _Rime Piacevole_ of Giovan Battista
Fagiuoli, a poet who was one of the chief boon companions of the
pleasure-loving Cardinal, and seems to have been consulted as to the
planting of the grounds. He strongly recommended bay trees: “they are
evergreen, but not funereal like cypresses, so noble that kings make
crowns of their leaves; and above all they avert thunderbolts, which
are frequent at Lappeggi. But,” he continues in his facetious poem,
“plant what you will, everyone is sure to praise your work, for a
Prince can do no wrong. Should he by chance commit some gross error,
liars and courtiers will make it out a miracle; so that if you plant a
pumpkin to-morrow they will all exclaim, ‘What a beautiful outlandish
fruit.’ Or if you sow a bean—a common enough thing—you will hear, ‘What
a glorious plant, what a show it makes, what taste the Cardinal has.’”
Francesco Maria de’ Medici was very fond of practical jokes. Once he
saw an ass go pass the villa with her foal, and calling his French
cook Monsù Niccolò and his two aids bade them buy the foal and serve
it dressed in various ways at dinner. After the guests had eaten their
fill, particularly of an excellent pasty, the bleeding legs and head
of the little donkey with the hair on, were solemnly placed on the
centre of the table. Some of the party had to leave the room, but most
of them praised the good dinner and laughed, or pretended to laugh,
at the Cardinal’s wonderful wit. Fagiuoli writes a long description
of the scene in verse, saying that for his part, he preferred the
long ears. He also describes the game of _pallone_, in high favour at
Lappeggi, and various games of cards over which large sums of money
were lost. Comedies written by him were learned and acted by the
courtiers within six hours, in obedience to a master whose every whim
had to be gratified at once. On the Cardinal’s birthday there was a
fair on the sward near the villa; all Florence, and the inhabitants of
the neighbouring villages, flocked to see the fun and danced till late
in the night. Marionettes, musicians, astrologers, conjurors “who,”
says our satirical poet, “did not much astonish me, because the talent
of changing cards by sleight of hand is by no means uncommon in these
days.”
There were great doings at Lappeggi in 1709; Frederick IV, King of
Denmark,[33] was in Florence, and the Cardinal de’ Medici begged
him to honour his villa with his presence, and asked ten ladies of
the aristocracy, chosen for their knowledge of French, to meet him.
Prince Giovan Gastone waited betimes upon the King with all the court
dignitaries to accompany him to his uncle’s villa where the ladies
received His Majesty at the door with much reverence and courtesying,
and at dinner they and Prince Giovan Gastone sat at the King’s table
and were served by the pages of the court; the Cardinal having a bad
fit of the gout being unable to do the honours himself. The dinner
consisted of four complete changes: one cloth after another was removed
and towards the end came a course of sweet dishes of various kinds;
after these had been tasted, sugar-plums disposed in pyramids and many
kinds of liqueur were placed on the table. In front of the King was put
a large coffee-pot in the shape of a fountain with four jets, and at
the sides of the table were four golden dishes, two containing three
cups of chocolate each, the others cups of water. Between the golden
dishes the space was covered with Savoy and other biscuits, and when
the coffee-pot was removed, “trionfi” of bottles of San Lorenzo and
other rare wines took its place, and all the glasses used were of the
finest engraved Bohemian glass. During dinner there was a concert,
and the same musicians followed the King about during the whole day,
and managed so well as to be ready to receive him with dulcet tunes
at every halting-place. After the banquet the King withdrew with the
ladies and cavaliers into another room and played games until four
o’clock, when they drove about the grounds and visited the home farm.
Then going into the orange garden they found a sumptuous cold repast,
preparations of milk, capons in jelly, iced fruit and sweetmeats of
divers kinds. The iced fruit, a dish new to the King and to all his
people, delighted them so much that His Majesty asked permission to
make a present of a dish to his dwarf, who was of noble birth and a
great favourite and trusted counsellor. On a table apart stood small
flasks of the most costly Tuscan wines, chiefly those made on the
surrounding hills praised so highly by Redi in his _Bacco in Toscana_.
The King and all the company sat down and ate heartily of the good
things, and then, to crown so royal a day, it was proposed to dance;
the King set the example, but as night was approaching and dew began
to fall it was considered prudent to retreat indoors. More liberty and
jollity being permitted in the country than in town, French dances were
abandoned and peasant dances, such as the _Spalmata_, the _Mestola_ and
the _Scarpettaccia_ were indulged in, to the great satisfaction and
delight of His Majesty. Thus they amused themselves until three in the
morning, when all returned to Florence.”[34]
In July of the same year the Cardinal was, for family reasons, induced
to obtain dispensation from Holy Orders and marry the Princess
Eleonora Gonzaga of Guastalla, twenty-five years his junior, and the
bachelor amusements at Lappeggi came to an end. The young Princess
openly manifested her dislike and contempt for her worn-out, gouty and
corpulent husband, and he, they say, took this so much to heart that he
died after only eight months of married life.
Lappeggi was then abandoned and shut up for four years when Cosimo
III lent it to Princess Violante of Bavaria, widow of his eldest son.
She loved the society of literary men and poets and had a particular
admiration for _improvisatori_. Cavaliere Bernadino of Siena, famous
for his talent in improvising, often visited her at Lappeggi, where he
met the burlesque poet Ghivizzani, and a peasant girl who lived near
by called Domenica Maria Mazzetti, surnamed la Menica di Legnaja, who
had a great reputation for improvising in “terza rima.” So delighted
was Princess Violante with the girl’s talent that she had her taught
reading, writing, Latin and music, all which she learnt with ease.
After the death of Cosimo, Princess Violante had to give up Lappeggi
and went to live in Rome; she took the peasant girl with her and caused
her to be crowned with bays on the Campidoglio.
In 1816 Lappeggi was sold by public auction to Signor Capacci; he
soon resold it to Captain Cambiagi, who was obliged to take down the
second story, which was causing the walls to bulge and threatened to
destroy the whole house, and at his death the Gheradesca family bought
it and turned the royal villa into a lodging-house for poor people. In
1876 it came into the possession of the well-known sculptor Giovanni
Dupré, whose daughter, also a sculptress, still owns it. In May 1895
the villa, like so many in the neighbourhood of Florence, suffered
severely from an earthquake; but time, neglect and earthquakes have
been unable to quite destroy the beauty of the place, and as we stand
on the wide broad terrace in front of the villa looking out across the
valley of the Chianti towards Siena, the talent of Antonio Ferri the
architect is realised, who so happily placed the villa of Lappeggi and
its gardens in sight of so fine a scene. The lines of the balustrade,
projecting above the garden in a bold half circle, are seen against the
hills where they slope down towards the valley, thus forming a scene as
austerely beautiful as a drawing by some great Tuscan Master. A wide
staircase leads swiftly down on either side of the terrace to the lower
level of the garden, which is raised above the vineyards by strong
bastions and confined by a low rampart wall. The outline of the beds
remain as in Zocchi’s print, but where the pleasure-loving Cardinal
once walked with a gay company of Florentines among the brightness of
his flowers now are seen only artichokes and potatoes, and the statues
and vases are no longer standing to recall the pageantry of those days.
At the top of the garden a big grotto has been scooped out beneath the
upper terrace, which Francesco Maria, no doubt remembering for a brief
moment his title of Cardinal, caused to be ornamented with terra-cotta
bas-reliefs illustrating such scenes as Moses before the burning bush,
while a huge statue of St Mark with his lion seated above a pool of
water, might easily be mistaken by a casual observer for a Neptune
rising from the sea with his dolphin.
From the loggia of the house one enters a finely proportioned room,
decorated with charming frescoes of landscapes seen through arches,
where pheasants strut on terraced walks, while a statue of Venus looks
down upon a lake, all faintly painted and with a dim distance which
gives to the room that great idea of space which the Italians of the
eighteenth century so well knew how to render. We sat here one rainy
day reading of the gay doings of Cardinal Francesco Maria, and as we
saw the rents in the walls made by the earthquake, and recalled the
bargain between the Cardinal and his architect, we wondered that the
villa should have stood so long.[35]
FOOTNOTES:
[32] A new-born babe was smuggled into the Pitti Palace in a lute and
presented to the Grand Duke by Bianca Cappello as his child; Francesco
I bought for him the estate of Capistrano in the Abruzzi which carried
the title of Prince with it, and left him also large property by will.
The real mother was murdered, as soon as she had given up her child, by
the orders of Bianca.
[33] When travelling in Italy as crown prince in 1691, Frederick fell
in love with Maddalena Trenta, daughter of a gentleman at Lucca; and
being at Venice for the carnival in 1709 he could not resist going
to Florence in order to see once more the woman he had loved so
passionately. After his departure she had sought refuge and consolation
in the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, and he obtained a
special dispensation to pay visits to the still beautiful nun, who they
say tried to convert him.
[34] Taken from a manuscript (No 893 in the MSS. Moreniani). “Relazione
di tutti le Cerimonie, Trattamenti, Feste e Trattenimenti seguiti
in Firenze l’anno 1708 in 1709, nella venuta di Federigo IV, Re di
Danimarca e Norvegia.”
[35] For the account of Lappeggi in the days of the Cardinal Francesco
Maria de’ Medici, I am chiefly indebted to a rare pamphlet by Signor G.
Palagi, _La Villa di Lappeggi e il Poeta Gio. Batt. Fagiuoli_. Firenze,
Succ. Le Monnier 1876.
[Illustration: VILLA DELLA PETRAJA]
[Illustration: (Drawing of the view from garden to the Villa.)]
VILLA DELLA PETRAJA
The number of beautiful homes owned by the Medici strikes one with
fresh surprise when visiting the villas of Petraja and Castello, which
lie close together with a shady ilex wood between them, about three
miles from Florence. Something of the old charm still lingers about
them although the life of that time has departed, and few now pace the
terraced walks, or sit in the shade of the quiet ilex woods, where
once all the gay world of Florence thronged to hold court round their
Medicean rulers. The charm of both villas now lies in their gardens
and surroundings, and though so essentially Florentine each has its
individual character—Petraja, within sight of the city, peaceful,
amidst a garden of roses and carnations, its terraces sinking gradually
down to the plain, with an enormous marble reservoir of clear green
water, in which colossal carp disport themselves under the first one,
on which the villa and a few huge ilexes stand. A rustic staircase
twines round the trunk of the largest of these trees leading up to a
platform among the branches, where Victor Emanuel used to dine. The
view of Florence at one’s feet, surrounded by villa-crowned hills, is
lovely, and Ariosto is said to have written his well-known lines while
standing on the terrace of Petraja—
“To see the hills with villas sprinkled o’er
Would make one think that, even as flowers and trees,
Here earth tall towers in rich abundance bore.
“If gathered were thy scattered palaces
Within a single wall, beneath one name,
Two Romes would scarce appear so great as these.”[36]
The beautiful fountain on the east side of the villa was removed from
Castello and brought here by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo. It is one
of Tribolo’s masterpieces, and Vasari tells us “he carved on the marble
base a mass of marine monsters, all plump and under-cut, with tails
so curiously twisted together that nothing better can be done in that
style; having finished it, he took a marble basin, brought to Castello
long before ... and in the throat, near to the edge of the said basin,
he made a circle of dancing boys holding certain festoons of marine
creatures carved with excellent imagination out of the marble; also the
stem to go above the said basin he executed with much grace, with boys,
and masks for spouting out water of great beauty, and on the top of
this stem Tribolo placed a bronze female figure a yard and a half high
to represent Florence ... of which figure he had made a most beautiful
model, wringing the water out of her hair with her hands.”[37]
Petraja is first celebrated in Florentine history for a gallant
defence made by its owners the Brunelleschi, against the Pisans and
their English and German allies in 1364. It was the time of the fierce
feud between Pisa and Florence, when the Pisans were smarting under
the loss of the great iron chain used for closing the entrance of
their port, which the Florentines had carried off in triumph and hung
over the western door of San Giovanni. Piero de’ Farnese, commander
of the Florentine army, had also taunted the Pisans by striking a
commemorative coinage under their very walls; Piero, however, died of
the plague, and the fortune of war changed. The Pisans not only coined
money under the walls of Florence, but they ravaged the whole country.
“The Germans,” writes Scipione Ammirato, “the Pisan despoilers and
the English, encamped at Sesto and Colonnato on their way back from
the Mugello, and spreading over the slopes of Monte Morello took San
Stefano in Pane, where they remained some days devastating the villas,
which they burned down over a radius of three miles. The sons of
Boccaccio Brunelleschi, most valorous youths, then owned Petraja....
The villa being therefore well defended by the young Brunelleschi,
who showed no sign of surrendering, the enemy determined to take it
by force, with the intention of cutting the defenders to pieces and
razing the building to the ground. The English[38] first undertook the
work and advanced in fine order with the greatest ferocity, carrying
ladders and catapults as though they had to storm the walls of Florence
itself. But all was in vain. Some were killed, many others were bruised
and wounded. The Germans then determined to try their luck and made a
second assault as furious as any castle ever underwent. Neither more
nor less happened to them than what had befallen the English. So they
determined with combined forces to assault the villa a third time, and
to their shame and the everlasting glory of the Brunelleschi they were
once more repulsed.”[39]
The Brunelleschi were on the winning side, and had the joy of
witnessing the triumphal entry of Galeotto Malatesta and his army into
Florence; when, by way of insulting a fallen foe, the Pisan prisoners
were compelled to kiss the tail of the Marzocco, the stone lion beloved
of all Florentines.
The Strozzi were the next owners of Petraja, and we can fancy the
pleasure Palla Strozzi took in spending some of his wealth on laying
out terraces and beautiful gardens and filling his villa with costly
works of art and valuable manuscripts. He occupied several high offices
in Florence and took a leading part in the affairs of the city;
unfortunately he joined the Albizzi against the Medici and was exiled
in 1435. His son Messer Lorenzo di Palla Strozzi seems however to have
still owned Petraja in 1438, as is shown by a deed executed by him
before a public notary dated “from my villa of Petraja.” Whether it
came into the possession of the Medici when the estates of Palla were
confiscated by the Republic of Florence after the return of Cosimo
the Elder from exile, or whether it was confiscated in consequence of
the rebellion of Filippo Strozzi against the government of Cosimo, is
not ascertained. Palla Strozzi was sixty-six years old when he was
driven into exile, and although he carefully avoided the society of
other Florentine malcontents and lived entirely with learned men, his
sentence of banishment was renewed. He lost one son after another, and
died in 1462 without seeing his beloved Florence again.
Cosimo de’ Medici died two years later at the age of seventy-six, the
Republic inscribed the glorious title of “Pater Patriae” on his tomb,
and he was universally mourned as the most sagacious man in Italy. “His
financial genius,” says Galluzzi, “was such that when Alfonso, King
of Naples, joined the Venetians against the Republic of Florence, he
caused so great a dearth of coin by drawing bills as to compel them
to come to terms. There are few examples in history of a citizen who,
without arms, and solely by the admiration excited by his virtues,
became the master of his fatherland.”[40] “Nothing is denied to him,”
exclaimed Pius II, “he is a judge of war and peace, a moderator of the
laws; not so much a citizen as the lord of the country. The policy
of the Republic is settled in his house, he gives commands to the
magistrates.” “Write in private to Cosimo,” was the advice Sforza’s
envoy gave to his master, “if you want anything particularly....
Cosimo does everything.... Without him nothing is done.”[41] The most
eminent men in Florence were among his intimate friends: Antonino the
saintly archbishop, Fra Angelico the holy painter, and the learned monk
Ambrogio Traversari, who set aside one of the cells of St Marco for his
use. Cosimo invited Argyropulos the Greek to Florence, and made him one
of the teachers of his son Piero and of his grandson Lorenzo. Marsilio
Ficino was brought up in his house, and the last year of his life he
spent in studying the translation made by his protegé of Plato’s _On
the highest good_.
Cosimo I, his collateral descendant, was like all his house a patron of
men of letters; he lived much at Petraja, and wishing to have Varchi
near him “to enjoy his sweet converse,” lent him “La Topaja,” a small
villa on the hillside above Petraja. Poets, artists and strangers of
note who came to Florence, toiled up the steep road to visit the great
historian, and Varchi must often have entertained there the celebrated
courtezan Tullia d’ Arragona, whose portrait at Brescia by Bonvicino
fully justifies the passionate verses addressed to her by so many poets
of that time.
... “occhi belli.
Occhi leggiadri, occhi amorosi e cari,
Piu che le stelle belle e piu che il sole.”
writes Muzio; while Ercole Bentivoglo indited sonnets to
her celestial brow. Tasso called her “la mia Signora,” and Alessandro
Arrighi praised her wise conversation, her most rare beauty, and her
singing, which could turn a marble statue into flesh and blood. Tullia
was the daughter of Cardinal Luigi d’ Arragona (son of the Marquis of
Gerace, a natural son of Francis I of Arragon, King of Naples, and of
Diana Guardato). Born in Rome and educated in Siena and Florence, she
aspired to be a second Sappho. Varchi, in spite of the silvered hair he
talks so much about, evidently succumbed to the charms of the beautiful
woman, and even when love had cooled into a platonic friendship he
continued to polish and sometimes re-write, in his elegant scholarly
language, the sonnets and verses of the lovely Tullia. Her reputation
as a poetess induced Cosimo to excuse her from wearing the yellow veil,
odious sign of her profession. The sonnet sent with her petition, which
is still in the state archives of Florence, bears _Fasseli gratia
per poetessa_ in his handwriting on the margin. In her old age she
became devout and was a protegée of the pious Duchess Eleonora of
Toledo, wife of Cosimo. Tullia’s poem _Guerrino il Meschino_, which
she declared to be the versification of a Spanish story, was written
about this time; it is no doubt an old popular tale, and some critics
hold that from it Dante took the conception of his Divine Comedy. In
the preface she rates Boccaccio soundly for “the improper, indecent and
truly abominable things” in his book, and wonders how people calling
themselves Christians can hear his name mentioned without making the
sign of the Holy Cross. “Yet,” she goes on, “so corrupt is our nature,
that the book is not avoided as an abomination, but run after by all.”
Poor Tullia, when young and beautiful she no doubt read the _Decameron_
with as much zest as other people, and one cannot help thinking
she must occasionally have been rather bored in her new rôle of a
well-conducted woman. Her patroness Eleonora, disliked in spite of many
virtues by the Florentines on account of her “insopportabile gravità,”
died in 1562, and Tullia did not long survive her.
After the death of Cosimo I, Petraja was the favourite residence of his
son, Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, on his rare visits to Florence.
He commissioned Bernardo Buontalenti to enlarge and improve the villa,
“but,” says Ammirato, “I am persuaded that the tower we see to-day,
which Cardinal Ferdinando certainly did not touch when he altered the
rest of the building, is the same that was assaulted by the Pisan
army.[42] When the Cardinal left the church and married Christine of
Lorraine, Petraja was their favourite residence; and here in May 1598
they received the _Chiaus_ of the _Gran Signore_, as old Settimanni
calls the Sultan’s ambassador, who came to treat about Levantine
commerce, a very important thing for Leghorn. The Turk evidently
enjoyed himself at Florence, as he spent seventy-four days there, and
“although he had a large company with him he was a cheap and frugal
guest,” remarks the old chronicler.
Ferdinando, one of the best of the Medici, was fond of gathering
literary society about him. He gave Scipione Ammirato, “the modern
Livy,” rooms in his palace in Florence, and offered him La Topaja as a
country residence. But the steepness of the road alarmed the southern
Italian, accustomed to the dead flat of the country about Lecce; so
the Grand Duke gave him an apartment in Petraja, where the history
of Florence was chiefly written. In front of La Topaja is an orchard
garden with a marble statue of St Fiacrio, whom Moreni calls a son
of Eugenius IV, King of Scotland (he really was I am told an Irish
Chief), who devoted all the hours he could spare from his orations to
the culture of medicinal plants. A laudatory inscription was put on the
base of the statue by Cosimo III, in 1696.[43]
When Victor Emanuel came to Florence (as a stepping-stone to Rome)
Petraja and Castello were his two favourite villas, and enormous
aviaries were erected on the upper terrace of Petraja for his fine
collection of pheasants. His wife “la bella Rosina” lived there,
and her beauty is still talked of by the people about the place.
For the King’s convenience the great inner courtyard, with frescoes
by Volterrano—or what little was left of them after having been
white-washed and then “restored”—was glazed over, which though perhaps
convenient has entirely spoiled the look of the villa.
[Illustration: (Drawing of fountain with trees in background)]
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Translated by R. C. Trevelyan.