_Via S. Gallo. No. 74._
This beautiful, but unfinished, palace was begun by a son of Pandolfo
Pandolfini, who went to Naples in 1465 as ambassador of the Florentine
Republic. He was so popular there, and became such a favourite with
the King, that his son Gianozzo, described as a “jocund and liberal
man, honoured by all who knew him,” was made Bishop of Troia. When
the Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici became Pope he summoned Gianozzo
Pandolfini to Rome, and created him Governor of Castel Sant’Angelo. But
Florence was the place he loved, and he often came to stay in a house
he had hired in the Via S. Gallo from the monks of Monte Senario. After
improving the house, and turning part of the orchard into a garden, he
wanted to buy it, but the monks refused to sell, alleging that in the
orchard stood an oratory, or small church, which had once formed part
of a convent of Benedictine nuns. Leo X. came to the aid of his friend
the Bishop, and by a Papal Bull, dated 28th May, 1517, followed by a
Brieve in Feb. 1520, conceded to him, and approved of the sale to him,
of the house, land and church, allowing him to suppress and transfer
the latter elsewhere if it so pleased him. The Pope at the same time
sent some fine marbles from Rome to be used in the decoration of the
house. Thereupon Bishop Pandolfini addressed himself to his “most
dear friend Raffaello da Urbino,” who, as Vasari tells us, “made for
him a design for the palace he wished to build in Via S. Gallo, and
Giovanfrancesco da San Gallo was sent from Rome to begin the work,
which he did with all possible diligence.”
Bishop Gianozzo died in 1525, so Vasari is in error when he states
that the building, which had been interrupted by the death of the
architect and the siege of Florence in 1530, was continued by him, with
Bastiano da San Gallo, surnamed Aristotle, as his architect. It was
most probably Ferrando Pandolfini, a man of considerable learning, to
whom his uncle ceded his bishopric of Troia, and to whom he also left
the palace, who went on with it, and who caused the inscription to be
placed under the cornice, JANNOCTIUS. PANDOLFINIUS. EPS. TROIANUS.
LEONIS. X. ET. CLEMENTIS. VII. PONT. MAX. BENEFICIIS. AUCTUS. A.
FUNDAMENTIS. EREXIT. AN. SAL. M. D. XX. The original design by Raphael
is said to have been curtailed, so that the part which now consists of
ground-floor rooms, covered by a large terrace, ought to have formed an
integral portion of the edifice. But the building is so beautiful as it
stands that one can hardly regret what was left undone.
The entrance door, the windows, especially those of the first floor,
which are Ionic, while the lower ones are Doric, and the capitals of
the columns surrounding the loggia, are very fine. In 1616 the palace
passed to a descendant of Bishop Gianozzo’s third brother, who finished
it and laid out the garden, which had been neglected. He also dowered
the oratory of S. Silvestro which had been incorporated with the house
and not transferred. Roberto Pandolfini, his nephew, inherited the
palace in 1655, and it is still in the possession of descendants of
the family. Count Alessio Pandolfini restored it in excellent taste
in 1875, when the outer door of the small church, or oratory, was
made into a window. Florence owes to Battista, another brother of
Bishop Gianozzo Pandolfini, the fine doorway of the Badia, which he
commissioned Benedetto da Rovezzano to build, and he also erected the
tomb to his grandfather, another Gianozzo Pandolfini, in the same
church.
[Illustration: PALAZZO PANDOLFINI.]