_Borgo degl’Albizzi. No. 18._
This palace was built by Rinaldo degl’Albizzi, Cosimo de’ Medici’s
great rival, next to that of his father, and after his exile it
was bought by the Valori. Taldo de Valore, four times a Prior, and
Gonfalonier of Justice in 1340, was the grandfather of the influential
citizen Bartolomeo, one of the _Dieci di Guerra_, and thrice
Gonfalonier. One of his sons, Niccolò, devoted to the Medici, was
elected to the most important offices under the Republic. Francesco,
his grandson, four times Gonfalonier of Justice and ambassador to
various foreign powers, was killed in 1498 when Savonarola, of whom
he was a staunch partisan, was arrested. To Filippo Valori, a friend
of Lorenzo the Magnificent and of all the circle of brilliant men
who surrounded him, we owe the publication of Marsilio Ficino’s
translation of Plato; whilst his son Baccio was “that worst of bad
citizens” who conspired against the liberties of Florence in favour
of the Medici, and was then set aside by the Duke Alesandro. Being,
as Varchi writes, “of an unquiet, prodigal, and rapacious nature and
not well off, he could not live as a gentleman and satisfy his wants,
which were infinite, without holding some high office in the city;
so his discontent was extreme.” He joined the party of the exiles
and was taken prisoner together with Filippo Strozzi at Montemurlo.
Bernardo Segni describes how “all the people ran down the Via Larga to
the house of the Medici to see the miserable and affecting sight of
Baccio on a sorry nag, in a rusty coat of mail and without a cap; he
who but a short time before had been so fortunate a Commissary-General
at the camp, and for so many months master in Florence, and afterwards
Governor of various provinces; and Filippo Strozzi, who had been
accounted the first man in Italy and honoured for every great quality,
on a similar beast, in a leathern jerkin and coarse cloth overcoat.
It seemed a spiteful, dishonest trick of fortune. Antonfrancesco
degl’Albizzi excited no less compassion. Of a most noble family and
proud by nature, he had ruled Florence like a Prince, had changed her
government, and now was led on foot meanly and had shameful words
cast at him by the onlookers. All dismounted at the fortunate house
of the Medici and were led before the Lord Cosimo, being vilified and
insulted by the sycophants and abettors of the Pallesca grandeur.
Kneeling humbly before the Lord Cosimo and before his mother, they
begged heartily for pardon; he replied in a few quiet words, with an
aspect rather kindly and benign than angry and cruel.... Five were
beheaded on that day [20 August, 1535], to wit Baccio, Filippo his
son, Filippo his nephew, Antonfrancesco degl’Albizzi and Alessandro
Rondinelli. Messer Alessandro Malgonelle, who, being one of the
Eight, was present when they were examined and tortured, with great
joyfulness said aloud in public: ‘To-day we have wrung the necks of
four thrushes and of one blackbird; the blackbird being Rondinelli,
who was inferior to the others in birth and riches.’”[12] Niccolò
Valori, member of the Platonic Academy, was Commissary at Pistoja in
1501, and soon afterwards ambassador to Louis XII. of France, who named
him a chamberlain and a councillor. In 1507 he was sent on an embassy
to Ferdinand the Catholic at Naples, and in the same year became
Commissary of the Tuscan Romagna. Five years later he was accused of
conspiring against the Medici together with Boscoli and Capponi, and
sentenced to life-long imprisonment in the tower of Volterra. His
grandson obtained his release by presenting Leo X. with the life of his
father, Lorenzo de’ Medici, written by him.
Baccio Valori, son of Filippo, who perished by the headman’s axe, was
a man of vast culture and a distinguished lawyer. He enlarged the old
palace and collected a magnificent library. In a vellum bound booklet,
beautifully printed in 1604, his son Filippo describes how Baccio,
“after enlarging his house (without departing from the ancient lines),
thought well to decorate it outside with other antiquities befitting
both the land of his birth and himself as a man of letters.” These
antiquities are fifteen busts of illustrious Florentines sculptured
in marble in alto-rilievo, and set upon termini. In the lower row are
Accursio, Torrigiano Rustichelli, surnamed de’ Valori, Marsilio Ficino,
Donato Acciaiuoli, and Pier Vettori. In the alcoves between the first
floor windows are Amerigo Vespucci, Leon Battista Alberti, Francesco
Guicciardini, Marcello Adriano, and Vincenzio Borghini. Above are
Dante, Petraca, Boccaccio, Giovanni della Casa, and Luigi Alamanni. In
the corridor, “as being a more honourable place,” observes Filippo,
were the Archbishop S. Antonino, S. Filippo Neri, Maestro Luigi
Marsili, Lorenzo il Magnifico and Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, and a bust of
Baccio Valori himself--the only one left. From the busts on the façade
the palace is generally known in Florence as the Palazzo de’ Visacci,
or of the Ugly Faces.
Alessandro, the last of the Valori, died in 1687, and his nephew,
Senator Luigi Guicciardini, inherited the palace. In 1703 he bought two
small houses with stables behind, between it and the great Pazzi palace
(pulled down to build the Banca d’Italia), and in 1723 a large house
on the other side. His only daughter, Virginia, married Giovan Gaetano
Altoviti, who incorporated the houses on either side and renovated the
interior of the palace, which then took his name. The ceilings of two
of the rooms were frescoed by pupils of Luca Giordano, and round the
walls of one room are terra-cotta medallions, portraits of the Altoviti
and the Guicciardini. One of them, wearing the well-known Florentine
_lucco_, represents the great historian, Francesco Guicciardini.
Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pius II.), on the strength of an inscription
said to have been found at Fiesole which begins: FURIUS CAMILLUS
ALTIVITA--MAGNI FURII CAMILLI NEPOS--assigned a Roman origin to the
Altoviti; but Passerini believes the inscription is a medieval forgery.
The first mention of the family in the Florentine archives is in 1154,
when Corbizzo, son of Gollo, bought a house and a tower in the suburb
of S. Niccolò. His grandson Davanzato purchased an estate at Antella
and a tower in the suburb of S.S. Apostoli, he and his brothers having
certain rights of patronage over the church and the cemetery of S.S.
Apostoli. These rights were contested by the Prior of the church,
who challenged Davanzato to decide the question by a duel; however
Honorius III. interposed and by a decree addressed to the Podestà and
the people of Florence threatened to excommunicate anyone who took up
arms. From Davanzato’s son Altovito, a judge of considerable repute,
the family take their name. The Emperor Frederick II., to whom he was
sent on an embassy, held him in high esteem and knighted him with
his own hand in 1227. The eldest of Altovito’s sons, Guinizzingo,
commonly called Tingo, was the first of a long series of Gonfaloniers
of Justice the family gave to Florence, and during his rule the first
stone of Sta. Maria Novella was laid on May 3, 1294. Oddo, another of
Altovito’s sons, was a judge like his father and his name figures often
as either ambassador or Elder until after the battle of Montaperti,
at which he was present, his palace and tower were destroyed by the
Ghibellines.[13] But when the Guelphs returned to power in 1278, we
find him once more among the Elders, and two years later he was sent
to Pope Nicholas III. to beg him to put an end to the internecine
war between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Oddo degl’Altoviti took
an active part in the transactions and signed the treaty for the
Guelph party in the Mozzi palace in 1281. He warmly supported the new
law that all who aspired to office under the Republic should belong
to a Guild, so the nobles, who were chiefly Ghibellines, inscribed
themselves in the books of the Guilds without personally exercising any
trade, and thus eluded the law. The _popolani_ then rose, with Giano
della Bella at their head, and demanded reform. Oddo degl’Altoviti and
his cousin Palmiere assisted in drawing up the famous _Ordinamenti
della Giustizia_, the object of which was to exclude the nobles from
power and to ensure the summary and severe punishment of any noble
who injured a plebeian.[14] Palmiere was one of the companions of
Dante on an embassy to Boniface VIII. to beg him to try and pacify the
citizens of Florence, and like him died in exile. Oddo’s son Bindo,
took an active part in the government of the city. He was many times
a Prior and twice Captain of War, fighting against Henry VII., and
afterwards against Castruccio. At Altopascio he was made prisoner and
only regained his liberty after the death of the great Lucchese. He was
often sent as ambassador to various Italian cities, but disgraced his
name by the ferocity he showed in torturing the followers of the Duke
of Athens in 1343. One of the leaders of the revolt against the tyrant
he was foremost in inciting the people to brutal and loathsome acts of
cruelty. His niece Giovanna, married to Benci Aldobrandini, deserves
mention as a remarkable woman, of such wisdom and intelligence that the
magistrates always consulted her when in any difficulty. She was simply
called “Madonna,” as we might say, “the Lady,” and the square where her
husband’s house stood still bears the name of Piazza Madonna.
Antonio degl’Altoviti passed nearly all his life at Rome and married
a niece of Innocent VIII., whose banker he was. To him the Pope gave,
to the exclusion of the other branches of the family, the absolute
patronage of the church of S.S. Apostoli, where he was buried in 1508
in the fine tomb sculptured by Benedetto da Rovezzano for his brother
Oddo. Bindo, his son, who succeeded him in business, made an enormous
fortune, and was the friend of all the great artists of that time.
Michelangelo gave him the cartoon for one of the frescoes of the
Sistine chapel, and is said to have modelled the rare medal showing
Bindo Altoviti’s head on one side and one of his emblems, a woman
clinging to a column surrounded by waves, on the reverse. Raphael
painted his portrait as a young man, and executed for him the Madonna
dell’Impanata now in the gallery of the Pitti palace. Bevenuto Cellini
modelled and cast his bust in bronze,[15] while Jacopo Sansovino
designed a magnificent fireplace for his palace in Florence, which
Benedetto da Rovezzano decorated with delicate bas-reliefs. Vasari
also worked for him, painting the altar picture in the Altoviti chapel
in S. S. Apostoli and two loggie in his palace at Rome. A violent
antagonist of the Medici he not only expended large sums in aid of the
exiles, but sent one of his sons to fight under Piero Strozzi against
Cosimo I. at Siena. Another son, Antonio, entered the church and was
made Archbishop of Florence by Paul III., very much as an act of
hostility towards Cosimo, who retaliated by sequestering the revenues
of the archbishopric and forbidding Altoviti to enter Tuscany. It was
only in 1568, owing to the intervention of Pius V., that he was at
length enabled to take possession of his see. His entrance into the
city and his spiritual marriage with the Abbess of S. Pier Maggiore
were conducted with such solemnity and pomp that Cosimo was profoundly
irritated, and decreed that the ancient ceremony of the mystic
nuptials of the Archbishop and the Abbess should be for ever abolished.
Canon Moreni has published an account by an eyewitness of how the
guardians, or patrons, of the archbishopric, with all the clergy,
met Altoviti at the gate of the city bearing long staves, with green
garlands on their heads and gloves on their hands. One of the Strozzi
family led his palfrey and, passing through the principal streets, the
procession went to the church of S. Pier Maggiore (now destroyed).
Dismounting, the Archbishop was conducted to the high altar, when his
palfrey was taken possession of by the Abbess’s factor while its rich
housings fell to the Strozzi. After saying mass the Archbishop retired
to a room prepared for him “where was spread a sumptuous refection
suited to so noble a lord.” He then returned to the church, and
after a brief oration to the assembled nuns wedded the Abbess with a
golden ring. That night he slept in the convent in a magnificent bed,
specially prepared by the Abbess, which he took away to his own palace
next day.[16]
Giovan Battista degl’Altoviti lived chiefly in Rome and was the
intimate friend of the last scion of the Spanish family of Avila who
made him his heir, with the obligation of adding the name of Avila to
his own. With the death of the Marquess Corbizzo Altoviti-Avila, who
left no son, the ancient family is extinct.
Under a window on the ground floor of the palace is an inscription
recording a miracle performed by S. Zenobius. Here the saint met the
funeral of a young child whose mother, a lady from Gaul, was walking
beside the bier and weeping so bitterly that his heart was touched.
Bidding the men stop and put down the bier, S. Zenobius laid his hands
on the dead child and prayed, and the boy awoke and stretching forth
his hand clasped his mother round the neck. The shrine of the saint at
the corner of the Lambertesca palace is said to have been erected by
her.