_Via Guicciardini. No. 13._
This gloomy large palace was entirely rebuilt by Gherardo Silvani for
the Guicciardini, “changing it from the old to the modern form and
creating a fine staircase,” writes Baldinucci. It stands on the site
of several houses belonging to the Benizzi, where S. Filippo Benizzi,
General of the Servite Order, who out of humility declined the Papal
tiara, was born in 1233.
The Guicciardini came from Poppiana in the Val di Pesa in the XIIth
century, and at once took their place among the rich bankers of
Florence. Forty-four of the family were Priors and sixteen became
Gonfaloniers of Justice, among them Luigi, who was accused of lack of
energy at the time of the Ciompi riots. By a whimsical coincidence the
mob insisted on knighting him in the Piazza della Signoria, whilst his
house was being plundered and burnt. His son Giovanni was Commissary
of War with the army of the League in Lombardy and again at Lucca in
1430, when the defeat of the Florentine troops was attributed, not only
to his want of prudence, but to his love of gold. He was tried and
acquitted; and there is little doubt the accusation was false, promoted
by Cosimo de’ Medici whom Luigi had always opposed. Piero Guicciardini
on the contrary favoured the ambitious designs of Cosimo, and his son
Luigi, when Podestà of Fermo in 1435, captured Antonio Guadagni, the
great enemy of the Medici, and sent him to Florence, where he was
beheaded. Some years later Francesco Sforza made Luigi Podestà of
Milan. With the exception of the few months, during which he was at
different epochs Gonfalonier of Justice, most of his life was spent out
of Florence as ambassador to various Italian princes and towns. His
brother Niccolò married the daughter of the famous condottiere Braccio
di Fortebraccio, Lord of Perugia. He was one of the fifteen citizens
elected to govern Florence after the death of Leo X. who were dismissed
as too republican when Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici arrived in the
city. Niccolò was in danger of losing his head after the capitulation
of Florence, as he had been one of the most active of the _Dieci di
Guerra_ who conducted the defence. His son Braccio, taken prisoner at
Montemurlo, was condemned to imprisonment for life in the fortress of
Volterra.
The celebrated historian Francesco Guicciardini, nephew to Niccolò,
was born in 1482. At twenty-three he was already so able a lawyer
that the Signoria appointed him to read the Institutes in public; he
then began to practise at the bar and his reputation for eloquence,
acumen and gravity, obtained him the post of ambassador to Ferdinand
the Catholic of Aragon, from whom his enemies say he accepted a
bribe. “Certain it is,” writes Symonds, “that avarice was one of his
besetting sins, and that from this time forward he preferred expediency
to justice, and believed in the policy of supporting force by clever
dissimulation.” In 1513 Leo X. came to Florence, and discerning the
ability of Francesco Guicciardini appointed him Governor of Reggio
and Modena, to which Parma was added in 1521. Two years later Clement
VII. made him Viceroy of the Romagna, and in 1527 Lieutenant-General
of the Papal army with supreme authority. This, Passerini declares,
was the chief cause of the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of the
Pope, the Duke of Urbino disdaining to take orders from a mere lawyer.
In the same year he fruitlessly strove to uphold the Medicean cause
in Florence, only incurring the hatred of his fellow-citizens and the
bitter reproaches of the Pope, who accused him of want of energy.
Retiring to his villa near Arcetri he began his famous History, but
alarmed at the aspect of things in Florence, he fled to Rome in 1529
and was declared a rebel. Three years later he returned as one of the
twelve magistrates who “reformed” the city according to the commands
of Clement VII. and the Emperor, “when,” as Varchi tells us, “Messer
Francesco Guicciardini was more cruel and more ferocious than the
others” [in punishing and proscribing the anti-Palleschi citizens]. He
was elected to the Senate of the Eighty, and undertook to defend the
cause of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici before Charles V. at Naples,
“which he did with such ardour,” writes Bernardo Segni, “confuting
the accusations one by one with such contempt ... that the exiles
styled him Messer Cerrettieri.”[42] He won the cause and Alessandro
returned to Florence as absolute ruler. After the murder of the Duke,
Guicciardini thought that the young Cosimo would be easily led, and
supported his candidature to the throne with all his might. But for
once the astute lawyer had misjudged his man. Cosimo I. made him
understand that his advice was not wanted and that he intended to
be sole master in Florence, and Pitti writes: “when the Duke Cosimo
dismissed him together with certain of his colleagues his rage was
great.... Astonished and deeply hurt he retired to his villa of Sta.
Margarita at Arcetri where, carried away by anger, he re-wrote much
of his History to prove that he did not belong to the sect of the
Palleschi; and where he could, he attempted to show that he was but an
instrument of the Republic.”[43] He spent the last year of his life in
writing his famous histories and died, aged 58, on 22nd May, 1540.
Varchi says of him: “Messer Francesco, besides his noble birth, his
riches and his academical degree, and besides having been Governor
and Viceroy for the Pope, was highly esteemed and enjoyed a great
reputation; not only for his knowledge, but for his great practical
acquaintance with the affairs of the world and the actions of men. Of
such he would discourse admirably, and his judgment was sound. But
his conduct did not tally with his speech; being by nature proud and
curt, he was swayed sometimes by ambition, but oftener by avarice, in
a manner unbecoming to a well-bred and modest man.” For an analysis
of Guicciardini’s masterly _Istoria d’Italia_ and _Opere Inedite_, I
cannot do better than refer my readers to J. A. Symonds’ brilliant
pages in the first volume of his _Renaissance in Italy_. The actual
representative of the family, Count Guicciardini, descends from a
brother of the great historian and lives in the old palace in which he
was born and brought up.