by some of her own subjects, whom she punished as she had done the
assassins of her first husband. Giovanni de’ Medici, envoy of Florence
to the court of her son, married her the following year and died soon
after, leaving her with an infant boy. After vainly trying to stem
the invasion of her eldest son’s territories by Duke Valentino, who
entered the citadel of Forli by treachery, she was made prisoner and
sent to Rome; but after a short imprisonment was allowed to retire
to Florence, where she dedicated herself to the education of her
little son, Giovanni de’ Medici. Her letters, full of family troubles,
complaining bitterly that she was left without sheets for her bed,
forks or tablecloths, are sad reading. Pierfrancesco and Lorenzo de’
Medici attempted to contest her right to the villa and to the little
that was left of the heritage of her third husband “the Magnificent
Joanne de’ Medici”; and she lived in constant fear that Lorenzo, who
had unlawfully assumed the tutelage of her son, would make away with
him in order to dissipate the patrimony of his dead father. After
a law suit she rescued the boy from the clutches of his uncle and
smuggled him, with some waiting-women, into the nunnery of Anna-Lena.
Here, dressed as a girl and jealously guarded by the faithful nuns,
the future soldier Giovanni delle Bande Nere—the last of the great
condottiere—passed eight months. It was only after the death of
Lorenzo, in 1504, that he joined his mother at Castello, when she
devoted all her remarkable energy to his education. Tutor succeeded
tutor, for Madonna Caterina wished the boy to be an accomplished and
learned gentleman; but he despised book-learning, and only cared for
athletic exercises and out-door sports. “So you have your boy back,”
wrote an old follower of her husband whom she commissioned to procure
“a small and handsome horse” for the seven year old Giovanni. “If my
father had come to life again I could not be more glad; and so it is
with all the condottieri here in camp. The day your letter arrived the
commissary was so overjoyed he could not eat. As to the horse, we will
search among the condottieri here, and whosoever has one will be only
too proud to give it. We shall, without fail, find what you want.”[45]
In 1527 there were grand doings at Castello, when, as is described by
old Varchi, two armies came, “one to attack and pillage Florence as an
enemy—which was the army of the Bourbons; while the other under the
guise of a friend and defender pillaged and spoiled her—which was the
army of the League; and it happened that on the last Friday of April,
which was on the twenty-sixth day of the year 1527, the Cardinal of
Cortona [Silvio Passerini], although he knew all the intrigues and
confabulations of both old and young against the State, either not
believing or wishing to show he feared them not, left Florence most
imprudently with the other two Cardinals, the Magnificent, Count Piero
Noferi and the whole court, and went a little over two miles outside
the Faenza gate to Castello, the villa of Signor Cosimo, to meet and
receive the Duke of Urbino and the other heads of the League. Meanwhile
the citizens rose and took possession of the palace of the Signoria,
and the Cardinals with Ippolito had to return in all haste to quell the
insurrection. Thereupon the citizens sadly and sorrowfully went back to
their houses without injury but in great fear.”
Maria Salviati, the mother of Cosimo I, died at Castello; and they say
he was with difficulty persuaded to quit a hunting party and return
to receive her last blessing. He enlarged the villa considerably on
the eastern side after the designs of Tribolo, and charged Pontormo
to decorate the Loggia, but all the frescoes have perished. Cosimo
retired to Castello after his secret marriage with Camilla Martelli, a
marriage so distasteful to his Austrian daughter-in-law that she wrote
to her brother the Emperor to complain. He answered in the following
arrogant lines which she was silly enough to send to her father-in-law:
“I cannot conceive what the Grand Duke was thinking of when he made so
shameful and odious an alliance, ridiculed by all; it is thought the
good Duke must be out of his mind. I beg Your Highness not to permit
this impudent woman to be exalted, and to hold no communication with
her; for if in this matter you fail to show the greatness of Your soul
and Your magnanimity, everyone will be angered.”
The reply given by Cosimo de’ Medici was far more dignified: “As to
my having taken a wife, H.I.H. remarks that perhaps I had taken leave
of my senses.... One might have rather said I was off my head when I
ceded the reins of government to the Prince (Francesco, his eldest
son, husband of the Arch-Duchess) with seven hundred thousand ducats
of income. I did it with pleasure and I have no intention to cancel
my act, although it depends on my own will and pleasure, because I
had to do with men; but with regard to my marriage, wherein I had to
do with God, one cannot speak thus. I am not the first Prince who has
taken a vassal to wife, and shall probably not be the last; my wife
is of gentle birth, and is to be respected as such. I do not seek for
quarrels, but I shall not avoid them if they are forced upon me by my
own family. When I make up my mind to do a thing, I do it, regardless
of the consequences, trusting in God and my own right hand.”
In October 1608 Castello was the scene of much rejoicing for the
reception of Maria Maddalena of Austria, who passed some days there
before her solemn entry into Florence as the bride of Cosimo, eldest
son of Ferdinando I. The pomp and magnificence then displayed surpassed
anything yet seen; Ferdinando himself crowned his daughter-in-law at
the gate of the town, and then the Arch-Duchess, mounting a splendid
white palfrey, rode to the cathedral door amidst the acclamations
of the crowd. Christine of Lorraine, widow of Ferdinando I, whose
favourite villa Castello was, died there in December 1636 after
two days’ illness; and twenty-seven years afterwards her grandson
Giancarlo, brother of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, who was first a
soldier in the service of the King of Spain and then a Cardinal, closed
his unworthy life in the same villa. Described as “a man of little
worth and of evil morals,” he yet has a claim to the gratitude of
posterity as the builder of the charming theatre of the Pergola.
The gardens of both Petraja and Castello have been celebrated by many
writers in poetry and prose. Among others Redi, the jovial doctor,
sings the praises of the vineyards in his _Bacco in Toscana_, and takes
the opportunity to pay a compliment to that poor creature Cosimo III,
his patron.
“But lauded
Applauded,
With laurels rewarded,
Be the hero who first in the vineyards divine
Of Petraja and Castello
Planted first the Moscadello.”[46]
[Illustration: (Drawing of lake in garden.)]
Jacopo Cortesi, the Jesuit painter, better known as _Il Borgognone_,
lived as the guest of Cosimo III for some months at Castello, and
painted his own portrait there for the Uffizzi gallery in the habit of
his Order. Vast sums were spent by Pietro Leopoldo, the beloved Grand
Duke of Tuscany who became Emperor of Austria, on beautifying the
gardens of the two villas, and they still bear some faint traces of his
love for rare trees and shrubs.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] _Caterina Sforza._ By Pier Desiderio Pasolini. Vol. II. p. 321.
Firenze, 1893.
[46] _Bacchus in Tuscany._ A dithyrambic poem, from the Italian of
Francesco Redi, with notes original and select. By Leigh Hunt. London,
1828.
[Illustration: VILLA CORSINI AT CASTELLO.]
[Illustration: (Drawing of stone plaza sourounded by trees)]
VILLA CORSINI AT CASTELLO
This villa first belonged to the Strozzi, who sold it to the Rinieri in
1460, when it was called “La Lepre dei Rinieri.” About a century later
it was bought by Francesco di Jacopo Sangalletti, whose estates were
confiscated by the Medici, and sold to Pagolo Donati in 1597. It again
changed hands and at last became the property of Cosimo de’ Medici, son
of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I, but finding it useless to have three
villas—Petraja, Castello and Rinieri—so close together, he sold the
last in 1650 to Piero Cervieri, who died without heirs and left all he
possessed to the Jesuits. On the suppression of their Order the villa
was bought by the Lanfredini, from whom it passed into the possession
of the great house of Corsini, who enlarged and altered it, probably
from the designs of Antonio Ferri, the same architect who built the
large saloon, the fine staircase and the façade of the Corsini palace
on the Lung’ Arno in Florence.
Villa Corsini stands at the foot of the royal villa La Petraja. It is
a rather stately baroque edifice, with a large square courtyard in
the centre; and though but little raised above the plain, the view of
Florence from the south side of the garden is lovely. On the north
is a typical Italian pleasaunce, where narrow paths meander under the
deep shade of tall ilexes, oaks and fir trees; grey stone columns and
balustrades surround small squares and circles of ground, as though
it had been once parcelled out among the children of the house. A
fountain represents a prancing seahorse who is unceasingly occupied in
keeping a huge sarcophagus, entirely overgrown with maiden-hair fern,
always brimful of water. Standing by the splashing fountain we get a
beautiful glimpse of Petraja through the trees, standing high up on the
hill behind. Prince Corsini told me the fine ilexes at Narford Hall
were raised from acorns off these trees; the much-travelled Sir Andrew
Fountaine, who resided for some time in Florence, and probably bought
a good deal of his celebrated collection of Italian pottery from the
Grand Duke Cosimo III,[47] was an intimate friend of Prince Corsini who
sent a bagful of acorns to Narford. A present feature of the garden of
the Villa Corsini is a shady avenue of ilexes which leads to the stable
and was planted only fifty years ago.
To English people the villa is interesting as it was inhabited by Sir
Robert Dudley, to whom it was lent by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Robert
Dudley (born 1573) was the son of the Earl of Leicester by his second
wife Douglas Howard, widow of Lord Sheffield; but the marriage, for
various private and political reasons, was secretly solemnised and
never acknowledged by Leicester, who a few years later married Lettice,
widow of the Earl of Essex. Leicester calls Robert Dudley “my base son”
in his will, yet he left him “the lordships of Denbighe and Chirke,
etc., the castle of Kenilworth with all the Parkes, Chases and Lands
after the death of my dear brother Ambrose the Earl of Warwick,” and
other estates too numerous to mention here.
The Earl of Leicester died in 1588, and his brother a year later,
when Robert Dudley succeeded to Kenilworth. In 1591 he was affianced
to Frances Vavasour, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who however
forbade the celebration of the marriage on account of Dudley’s youth.
Dudley was educated at Christ Church, Oxford; where, under the date 7th
May 1588, he was entered as _Comitis Filius_. But his love of travel
and adventure drove him to study navigation; he built some warships,
engaged the best pilots he could find and started for the West Indies.
After conquering the Island of Trinidad he discovered Guiana (of which
he made a map published in his work, _L’Arcano del Mare_), and after
taking several galleons from the enemy returned to England with much
booty. Entering the navy, he, in the absence of his uncle the Earl of
Nottingham, took command of the English fleet in 1596; the following
year he led the van-guard in the battle of Cadiz; then he besieged
Faro in Algarve in Portugal; and when Calais was taken by Mendoza, he
commanded the English ships sent to the rescue.
In a letter to the Rev. Mr Hakluyt, a well-known writer on sea-voyages
and travels in the time of Elizabeth and James I, Dudley gives a
curious account of his first voyage at the age of twenty-one. “...
I weighed ancker from Southampton road the 6th of November 1594.
Upon this day my selfe in the ‘Beare,’ a ship of 200 tunnes, as
Admirall; and Captaine Munck in the ‘Beare’s Whelpe,’ Vice-Admirall;
with two small pinnesses, called the ‘Frisking’ and the ‘Earwig,’ I
passed through the Needles, and within two dayes after bare in with
Plimmouth. But I was enforced to returne backe. Having parted company
with my Vice-Admirall, I went wandering alone on my voyage, sailing
along the coast of Spaine, within view of Cape Finisterre and Cape St
Vincent, the north and south capes of Spaine. In which space, having
many chases, I could meet with none but my countreymen or countrey’s
friends. Leaving these Spanish shores, I directed my course, the 14th
December, towards the Isles of the Canaries. Here I lingered twelve
dayes for two reasons; the one, in hope to meete my Vice-Admirall; the
other, to get some vessel to remove my pestered men into, who being
140 almost in a ship of 200 tunnes, there grew many sicke. I tooke
two very fine caravels under the calmes of Tenerif and Palma, which
both refreshed and amended my company, and made me a fleet of three
sailes.... Thus cheered as a desolate traveller, with the company of
my small and newe erected Fleete, I continued my purpose for the West
Indies.
“Riding under this White Cape two daies, and walking on shore to view
the countrey, I found it a waste, desolate, barren and sandie place,
the sand running in drifts like snow, and very stony; for so is all the
countrey sand upon stone (like Arabia Deserta and Petrea), and full
of blacke venemous lizards, with some wild beasts and people which be
tawny Moores, so wilde, as they would but call to my caravels from the
shore who road very neare it. I now caused my master Abraham Kendall to
shape his course directly for the Isle of Trinidad in the West Indies;
which after twenty-two dayes we descried, and the 1st Feb. came to
anker under a point thereof, called Curiapan, in a bay which was very
full of pelicans, and I called it Pelican Bay. About three leagues to
the eastward of this place we found a mine of Mercazites, which glister
like golde (but all is not golde that glistereth), for so we found the
same nothing worth, though the Indians did assure us it was Calvori,
which signifieth golde with them. These Indians are a fine shaped and
a gentle people, all naked and painted red, their commanders wearing
crowns of feathers. These people did often resort unto my ship, and
brought us hennes, hogs, plantans, potatos, pines, tobacco, and many
other pretie commodities, which they exchanged with us for hatchets,
knives, hookes, belles and glasse buttons. The countrey is fertile, and
ful of fruits, strange beasts and foules, whereof munkies, babions and
parats were in great abundance.
“Right against the northernmost part of Trinidad, the maine was called
the high land of Paria, the rest a very lowe land. Morucca I learned to
be ful of a greenestone called Taracao, which is good for the stone.
Caribes I learned to be man-eiters or canibals and great enemies to
the Islanders of Trinidad. In the high land of Paria I was informed by
divers of these Indians, that there was some Perota, which with them
is silver, and great store of most excellent cane tobacco.... I was
told of a rich nation, that sprinkled their bodies with the powder of
golde, and seemed to be guilt, and that farre beyond them was a great
towne called El Dorado, with many other things.... And after carefully
doubling the shouldes of Abreojos, I now caused the Master (hearing by
a pilote that the Spanish Fleete ment to put out of Havana) to beare
for the Meridian of the yle of Bermuda, hoping there to finde the
Fleete. The Fleete I found not, but foule weather enough to scatter
many Fleetes which companies left me not, till I came to the yles of
Flores and Cuervo; whither I made the more haste, hoping to meete some
greate Fleete of Her Majestie my Sovereigne, as I had intelligence, and
to give them advise of this rich Spanish Fleete; but findinge none, and
my victuals almost spent, I directed my course for England.”
Here he fell in love with, and married, a sister of Thomas Cavendish,
who died without children in 1596. Soon afterwards he married Alice,
daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, by whom
he had four daughters. His one desire after coming into possession
of Kenilworth was to clear his own and his mother’s reputation and
honour, and for this purpose he instituted proceedings at law to prove
his legitimacy. At first in the Ecclesiastical Court he had hopes of
success, but the influence of the Essexs and Sydneys proved too strong;
the case was transferred to the Star Chamber, which ordered that
all “depositions should be sealed up and no copies taken,” and only
admitted the evidence of Lady Essex.
Irritated by such injustice Dudley left England, and with him went
his beautiful young cousin Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert
Southwell. At Lyons they entered the Roman Catholic Church, obtained
the Pope’s dispensation from the laws of consanguinity, and were
married, Lady Alice Dudley having in vain offered to join him with
their four girls and to become a Catholic.
From Lyons Sir Robert and his new wife went to Florence and Dudley
wrote to the Grand Duke asking for his protection and offering his
services. In quaint French he set forth his noble birth and high
lineage, claimed by virtue of descent to be Duke of Northumberland,
Earl of Warwick, and Earl of Leicester, and declared himself second
to none in the science of navigation and the art of ship-building; he
also promised to make the Grand Duke absolute master in the seas of the
Levant in spite of all Spanish, infidel and other galleys.
[Illustration: (Drawing of navigation compass)]
Ferdinando II, made inquiries of Lotti, his Minister in London,
about the “Conte di Varuich” before taking him into his service.
After expatiating upon the “exquisite stature, fair beard and noble
appearance” of Sir Robert Dudley, Lotti added that King James was
very angry at his marriage and his assumption of the title of Earl
of Warwick, and then writes in cipher, “the chief reason is that His
Majesty does not want Catholic subjects, especially when they are brave
and worthy men.” This brought the matter to a conclusion, and Dudley
immediately began building ships for the Grand Duke. He wrote proudly
of the galleon _San Giovanni_, “she was a rare and strong sailer, of
great repute, and the terror of the Turks in these seas”; and his
designs seem to have attracted notice in England, as Lotti wrote to the
Grand Duke in March 1607, “H. E. (Sir Thomas Challoner, tutor to Prince
Henry) showed me the design of a ship made in Leghorn by the Earl of
Warwick, and he also showed me another which he said was more perfect
than any.” This may account for James I, sending Dudley an order to
return to England, promising him an earldom and the title of Earl of
Warwick. But all offers that left his own and his mother’s name under
a slur were refused by Dudley, who remained in Tuscany where, thanks
to him, Leghorn became a great commercial port. He induced the Grand
Duke to build fortifications, to declare it a free port and to allow
an English factory to be set up. The draining of the marshes between
Leghorn and Pisa was also suggested by him.
In the _Specola_, or Natural History Museum, in Florence, are three
large manuscript volumes in Dudley’s writing on ship-building. The two
first are in English, the third in Italian, and his orthography, to
say the least, is in both languages peculiar. In the same museum is a
curious instrument of his invention for finding the ebb and flow of the
tides, of which I give, through the kindness of Mr Temple Leader, an
engraving taken from his interesting _Life of Sir Robert Dudley_, from
which most of my facts are taken.
In Florence, Dudley and his wife (mentioned by Lord Herbert of
Cherbury as “the handsome _Mrs Sudel_ whom he carried away with him
out of England and is here taken for his wife”) were known as Earl
and Countess of Warwick, until the Emperor Ferdinand II, to please
his sister the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, whose grand chamberlain
Dudley was, created him Duke of Northumberland in 1620.
Dudley was undoubtedly a remarkable man. He had been carefully
educated, was a brave and scientific seaman and well versed in military
and naval architecture; he excelled in all knightly exercises and was
cited for his courtly and polished manners. A man of letters and a
good mathematician, he also busied himself with medicine and invented
a powder known as _Pulvis Comitis Warvicensis_, much praised by Mario
Cornacchini, professor of medicine at Pisa, who declares that “clearing
the Italian seas of barbarous and evil pirates was not a greater
benefit to mankind than his fighting and exterminating the evil humours
which molest humanity and cause disease.”
Of Dudley’s twelve children the eldest, Maria, married the Prince
of Piombino; Maria Maddalena became the wife of Malaspina Marchese
d’Olivola, High Steward to Queen Christina of Sweden; and Teresa
married the Duke della Cornia. Robert, the eldest son, died a few
days before he attained his majority, and his mother was so affected
by his loss that she followed him to the grave within a few weeks,
to the intense grief of her husband. The second son, Charles, was an
unmannerly scapegrace who gave his father infinite trouble. He married
a Frenchwoman, Marie Madeleine, daughter of Charles Antoine Gouffier,
Marquis de Braseux and Seigneur de Crevecœur. His daughter was the
beautiful, witty and wild Christina Dudley married to the Marchese
Paleotti of Bologna, whose adventurous and romantic life has been
so well described by Signor Corrado Ricci,[48] and whose daughter
Adelaide, after various adventures, turned Protestant, married the Duke
of Shrewsbury, became a leader of fashion in London and Lady-in-Waiting
to the Princess of Wales; her son Ferdinand, after giving endless
annoyance to the Shrewsburys, ended his ill-spent life on the gallows.
He was hung at Tyburn on March 28th, 1718, for the murder of his
Italian servant, and curiously enough the Tuscan Minister present at
his execution was Don Neri Corsini, whose family now own the villa
where Sir Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Earl of Warwick,
lived for so many years and died in Sept. 1649.
Since 1230, when the Corsini came from Poggibonsi, their name fills
many a page of the history of Florence as Priors and Gonfaloniers of
the city. Andrea, the beloved and revered bishop of Fiesole, left such
a reputation for goodness and sanctity that he was beatified in 1440
and canonised by Urban VIII, in 1629. He restored the cathedral of his
diocese and the façade we now see was built by him. His brother Neri
succeeded him as bishop of Fiesole, while another brother, Matteo,
went to England, where his uncle was Master of the Mint, and made a
large fortune in trade. He is known as the author of interesting family
records and of the _Rosaia della Vita_, often quoted in the dictionary
of the Crusca as a model of pure and elegant Italian. Tommaso di
Duccio, their uncle, a learned jurist and a great statesman, was one of
the chief citizens of Florence in the fourteenth century, and to his
prudent counsels and wise administration the Republic owed much of her
prosperity and power. After long negotiations he induced the Visconti
to make peace with Florence, and when this was at length signed in
1353 he withdrew from public life, entered the Order of the _Gaudenti_
(instituted for the protection of widows and orphans) and jointly with
the Rossi and Manieri erected a monastery outside the Porta Romana.
For himself he built a small house hard by the monastery and passed
the rest of his days almost as a hermit, occupied in prayer and good
works. Notwithstanding the large amount given in charity he left a
very considerable fortune to his sons; the eldest, Amerigo, was bishop
of Florence at the time of the Council of Constance, which put an end
to the schism of the Church and elected Martino V, Pope. In order to
conciliate the citizens Martino raised Florence to the rank of an
archbishopric and bestowed the privilege of wearing the crimson robes
of a cardinal on her archbishop.
Luca Corsini was the popular Prior of Florence who shut the door of
the Palazzo della Signoria in the face of Piero de’ Medici after his
cession of Pisa, Leghorn, Pietrasanta and Sarzana to Charles VIII, of
France. As ardent a republican and as great an enemy of the Medici as
he was a friend of Savonarola, it is related that in 1498 the grave
magistrate was seen throwing stones and fighting in the streets in
defence of Fra Girolamo like any young lad. A daughter of the house
of Corsini, Marietta, married the celebrated Niccolò Macchiavelli and
is said to be depicted in his novel _Belfegor_; this may be—but he
mentions her in his will with affection and esteem. Bertholdo Corsini,
who was elected a Prior of Florence in 1531 after the fall of the
Republic, must have been a weak man. He paid court to Duke Alessandro
de’ Medici, who made him custodian of the fortress of San Giovan
Battista; but when Alessandro was murdered by his cousin Lorenzino,
Corsini repented and offered to give up the arms and ammunition in the
fortress to the citizens, who fearing a snare refused to listen to
him. When Cosimo II, entered the city, Bertholdo fled and joined the
standard of Piero Strozzi. He escaped with his life from the battle
of Montemurlo and after fighting in Piedmont and in France, returned
to Italy when the Siennese revolted and was appointed custodian of
the castle of Sienna. In the battle of Orbetello Bertholdo was taken
prisoner by the Spaniards, sold to Cosimo for 600 scudi, and beheaded
on the 2nd March 1555 in the Piazza S. Apollinari.