_Via Maggio. No. 7._
The fine palace now inhabited by the Baroness Ricasoli Firidolfi and
her children was built by the Ridolfi family on the site of houses
belonging to various families, in the XVth century, and bought in 1736
by Maria Lucrezia Firidolfi for her sons. The architect is unknown,
but the palace, with its fine courtyard, evidently dates from the XVth
century. On the first floor is a tiny chapel, entirely painted in oils
by Giorgio Vasari in a manner very different from his usual style.
Above the altar is a marble bas-relief of the Madonna and Child with S.
John, by Rossellini.
The history of this family is a complicated and a curious one. Divided
in the XIIth century into three branches, of which one retained the old
name of Firidolfi, whilst the other two took that of Ricasoli, they
were again reunited after eight hundred years in the person of the late
Baron Giovanni Ricasoli Firidolfi. His mother was the only daughter
of the great statesman Baron Bettino Ricasoli, his father the sole
surviving son of Giovanni Francesco Ricasoli di Meleto, who married the
only daughter of the last of the Firidolfi, whose name he added to his
own.
One of those long-bearded northmen (Longobardi), who came into Italy
in the VIth century, is said to have settled in the Mugello. But the
first of the family of whom we have documentary evidence is Geremia,
son of Ildebrando, lord of great estates in the Mugello and of nearly
the whole province of the Chianti, who being old, and without children,
made large donations to the Church. On the death of his first wife he
married a young girl, by whom he had one son, Ridolfo, inscribed among
the great Barons of Tuscany in a deed of 1029. From him the family took
the name of Firidolfi (de filiis Rudolphi). Ranieri Firidolfi fought
under Frederick Barbarossa, and obtained in fief the castles of Campi
and of Tornano, and, according to a tradition in the family, the strong
castle of Brolio. This originally belonged to Bonifazio, Marquess of
Tuscany, who in 1009 gave it to the monks of the Badia of Florence, a
donation confirmed by the Emperor Henry II. in 1012, and by Henry IV.
in 1074. Henry VI. not only confirmed his father’s gifts to Ranieri,
but added to them the castles of Moriano and of Ricasoli, not far from
Fiesole, from which the most powerful branch of the family took its
name.
Alberto Ricasoli, Ranieri’s son, served under the Emperor Otho IV., who
increased the privileges bestowed by former emperors, and in 1230 he
was elected Podestà of Siena. From his sons Ranieri and Ugo descended
the Ricasoli di Meleto of Ponte alla Carraja, and the great baronial
family. Ugo fought in the Guelph ranks at Montaperti, and in revenge
the Ghibellines destroyed his castle of Ricasoli, for which he obtained
compensation when his party returned to power. Bindaccio, his grandson,
showed such valour at the battles of Montecatini and Altopascio that
the Bolognese chose him as their Podestà, and Cardinal Albornoz made
him Captain-General of the Papal forces. One of his sons was a Bishop
of Florence, whilst another, Albertaccio, was so gallant a soldier
that at his death in 1335 the Republic gave him a public funeral, and
decreed that his arms, with the banner of the people and of the Guelph
party, should be placed above his tomb in Sta. Croce.
Ranieri Ricasoli di Meleto, a strong partisan of the Medici, was sent
to Flanders after the Pazzi conspiracy to sequester the monies in their
banks in Bruges, Ghent, etc. He was a very rich merchant, and built
the stately old Ricasoli palace on the Lung’Arno Corsini in 1480, said
to have been designed by Michelozzi (now the Hotel New York). Cinelli
describes the fine collection of pictures, and the beautiful garden
and loggia opposite (where now is the Hotel Bristol), then connected
with the palace by a passage under the street.[33] One of Ranieri’s
descendants was an intimate friend of Alfieri, whose tragedy Saul was
first acted in the private theatre of the Ricasoli palace.
Simone Ricasoli, son of Ranieri, was brought up with Lorenzo the
Magnificent, and when the young Cardinal Giovanni, his son, went
to Rome, Lorenzo confided him to the care of his devoted friend.
On Giovanni becoming Pope as Leo X., he summoned another Ricasoli,
Antonio, to direct the iniquitous war which despoiled the Della Rovere
of the Duchy of Urbino in favour of his own nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici.
The assault and capture of the strong fortress of S. Leo was famous
in the annals of that time. In 1526 he was Commissary of the war with
Siena, and the defeat of the Florentine troops was attributed to him;
so on the exile of the Medici the following year he was condemned to
death and his estates were forfeited. He escaped to Rome, and found
an asylum with Clement VII. until Florence was once more ruled by the
Medici, when he was created a Senator. After the battle of Montemurlo
he sat as one of the judges, and was distinguished for the harsh
brutality of his sentences on the wretched prisoners. His sons served
Cosimo I. well by sowing discord in Siena, and when the city fell into
the hands of the Duke he rewarded Giulio Ricasoli by restoring to him
the old feudal castles of Trappola, Rocca Guicciarda and Sagona, which
the Florentine Republic had confiscated in 1395. Giulio then reassumed
the old title of Baron, which his ancestors had refused to exchange for
the higher one of Count. The name of Ricasoli is connected with the
island of Malta, as Giovanfrancesco, a knight of the Order, gave such
large sums towards building the fortifications that one of the forts
was named after him.[34]
The life of Bettino Ricasoli, one of the makers of United Italy, is too
well known to need repetition here, and would take up too much space.
“Il fiero Barone” (the proud, or great, Baron), as the Florentines
called him (he was, I believe, the only Baron of Tuscany), died in
an old family palace in the Via del Cocomero, now, according to the
baneful habit they have in Florence of altering the names of ancient
streets, and thus sweeping away the historical landmarks of the city,
the Via Ricasoli.