_Via de’ Ginori. No. 2._
The Ginori palace once belonged to Bacio Bandinelli who died there in
1559. There is a fine courtyard and the large saloon on the first floor
is handsome; the building has been restored but not much spoiled. The
Ginori descend from a notary who came to Florence from Calenzano, in
the Val di Marino, in 1304, and lived close to the present palace of
his descendants. His son Gino was the first of twenty-six Priors of the
family and from him they took their name. Piero his grandson, the first
Gonfalonier of five of his house in 1423, was an important person in
the city and a friend of Giovanni de’ Medici, with whom he contributed
towards the building of S. Lorenzo.
Benvenuto Cellini tells us that for Federigo Ginori, “a young man of a
very lofty spirit,” he made a medal “with Atlas bearing the world upon
his shoulders, and applied to Michelangelo for a design. Michelangelo
made this answer: ‘Go and find out a young goldsmith named Benvenuto;
he will serve you admirably, and certainly he does not stand in need of
sketches by me. However to prevent your thinking that I want to save
myself the trouble of so slight a matter, I will gladly sketch you
something; but meanwhile speak to Benvenuto, and let him make a model,
he can then execute the better of the two designs.’ Federigo Ginori
came to me, and told me what he wanted, adding thereto how Michelangelo
had praised me, and how he had suggested I should make a waxen model
while he undertook to supply a sketch. The words of that great man so
heartened me, that I set to work at once with eagerness ... and when
Michelangelo saw it, he praised it to the skies. This was a figure, as
I have said, chiselled on a plate of gold; Atlas had the heaven upon
his back, made out of a crystal ball, engraved with the zodiac upon a
field of lapis-lazuli. The whole composition produced an indescribably
fine effect; and under it ran the legend _Summa tulisse juvat_.”[35]
Federigo was killed during the siege of Florence and his brother
Leonardo, a spendthrift and a gambler, was the husband of the beautiful
Caterina Soderini, whose story is a sad one. Forced by her father to
forget her early love the poet Luigi Alamanni, and married to Leonardo
Ginori, who had to fly to Naples to escape from his creditors, she was
exposed to the persecutions of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, and was
the innocent cause of his murder (see p. 263). Her son Bartolommeo,
famed for his strength and great stature, was chosen by Giovan Bologna
for the model of the young man in his group of the rape of the Sabines.
From him descended the Senator Carlo Ginori who founded the well-known
china manufactory at Doccia near Florence in 1740. He chartered a
ship for China and she brought back, not only models and specimens of
the various earths used in making china, but many rare plants and the
first gold fish that were seen in Europe.[36] The present Marquess
Ginori lives in the old palace, and the Doccia factory, which has
become a Company under the name of Richard Ginori, still keeps up its
reputation.