_Via Cavour. No. 2._
This palace was built by Carlo Fontana for the Cardinal Bandino
Panciatichi and is celebrated for its fine staircase, the incline
of which is so gradual that one of the Panciatichi, an officer on
the staff of the Arch Duke of Austria, used to ride upstairs. It was
erected on the site of the houses of the Della Casa family, who would
not merit special mention if Monsignore Giovanni Della Casa, born in
1503, had not belonged to the chief academies of the day and written
_Galateo_, that elaborate essay on good manners whose title has passed
into a proverb. He was Archbishop of Benevento in 1544 and soon
afterwards Nuncio at Venice. The scandal caused by his burlesque poem
_Capitolo del Forno_ probably prevented his being made a Cardinal.[51]
The story of the Panciatichi family would be almost a history of
Pistoja, as for more than three centuries the little town was torn to
pieces by the bloody feuds between them and the Cancellieri. According
to tradition they descend from a Roman Consul:
“Et genus et nomen gens haec Panseatica sumpsit
E Pansa eximio Consule magnanimo;
Belligeri Tuscam Pistori venit ad urbem
Cum cecidit fato consul uterque pari,”
wrote Giovanni Navarra in the XVth century; and in public acts and
ancient inscriptions the Panciatichi called themselves _Pansea
progenies_. They were lords of many strong castles and townlets in the
Apennines; amongst others of San Marcello, which from time immemorial
paid them a yearly tribute of 100 lbs. of cheese, 50 loads of beech
wood and 3 bushels of chestnuts. The oldest existing document about the
family is dated 1057, and relates to Pansa, or Pancio, son of Bellino
a knight of the Golden Spur who conceded to the Bishop of Pistoja the
right of allowing the friars of S. Salvatore to collect certain tithes.
Infrangilasta Panciatichi went to the crusades in 1190 and was taken
prisoner by Saladin, but after some months he escaped and returned to
Pistoja, where in fulfilment of a vow he gave lands to the church of
S. Angelo in Gora.[52] The documents relating to his sons Inghiramo
and Lanfranco are curious as showing the feudal rights enjoyed by a
great Ghibelline family. Ridolfo Panciaticho, his sons and his brother
Angelo, were created knights of the Golden Spur in 1329 by the Commune
of Florence, and a few years afterwards the latter was made a citizen.
His son Diliano was ambassador to the Emperor Charles IV., and a
descendant of his, Bartolomeo, was a most successful merchant at
Lyons. His son and namesake, a friend of the artists and men of letters
of his day, was himself a poet. In France, where he was ambassador for
some years, he became a Protestant, and on his return to Florence was
imprisoned by the tribunal of the Inquisition. After suffering torture
he publicly abjured in 1552 and was received again into the Roman
Catholic Church after long and wonderful ceremonies. The portraits of
himself and his wife Lucrezia by Bronzino, are in the Uffizi. His son
Carlo, a man of violent temper, was condemned to death for murdering
his servant, but was pardoned by Cosimo I. on the condition that he
married his mistress Eleonora degl’Albizzi, of whom the Grand Duke was
tired after she had borne him a son.
Niccolò Panciatichi, a member of the Academia della Crusca who won some
fame as a writer, inherited the palace from his uncle the Cardinal,
and married the rich heiress Caterina Guicciardini. He increased the
fine library, collected many valuable pictures, and probably placed
the Madonna and Child, of the school of Mino da Fiesole, on the corner
of the palace. His grandson Niccolò was a great botanist (a taste
inherited by the Marchioness Paulucci, his great-granddaughter) and
his garden at the Villa La Loggia, where exotic and rare plants were
cultivated with wonderful success, was celebrated. In 1762 he married
Vittoria, the last of the great Portuguese family of Ximenes d’Aragona,
who brought him a large fortune, besides the Marquisates of Esche in
Bavaria, of Saturnia in Southern Italy, a palace in Florence, etc. The
Panciatichi then added her name and her arms to their own (see p. 398).