_Via del Proconsolo. No. 10._
The Pazzi, who claim a Roman descent, came originally from Fiesole,
and were always Guelphs. Excluded by Giano della Bella, in 1292, from
all participation in the government of the city, it was only after
Cosimo de’ Medici’s return from exile that Andrea de’ Pazzi became a
Prior in 1439; when Cosimo gave his granddaughter Bianca in marriage
to Gugliemo, Andrea’s grandson. The houses of the various members of
the Pazzi family, who all made large fortunes in trade, once extended
for some distance along both sides of Borgo degl’Albizzi. But when,
towards the middle of the XVth century, the Florentine nobles began to
erect palaces in lieu of their old fortified houses, Messer Andrea de’
Pazzi commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed the beautiful
chapel for him in the cloister of Sta. Croce, to build a palace.
Poliziano’s statement that Jacopo, Andrea de’ Pazzi’s son, destroyed
his father’s house to build this palace, is controverted by documents
found by Signor Iodico Del Badia in the archives of the old _catasti_,
which show that Jacopo only incorporated an adjoining house he had
bought with the one inherited from his father. The splendid palace
cannot, however, have been completed when Andrea died in 1445, as his
son employed Giuliano da Majano and his brothers to finish it. Another
reason for attributing the building to Messer Andrea de’ Pazzi, and
not to his son Jacopo, is that the sail, an emblem always used for
indicating that the proprietor had made his fortune in trade, is among
the ornaments in the centre of the arches of the windows. On the
capitals in the courtyard are the dolphins, the arms of the Pazzi, and
the vase containing the Holy Fire. This, according to ancient custom,
was lit by means of certain stones, brought from the Holy Sepulchre by
Pazzino de’ Pazzi, said to have been the first to scale the walls of
Jerusalem in one of the crusades.
Under Lorenzo il Magnifico the Pazzi found themselves excluded from
office, and their animosity was further aroused by the loss of a
lawsuit involving the large fortune of Giovanni Borromeo, whose
only daughter had married Giovanni de’ Pazzi, Andrea’s nephew. By
Florentine law the daughter should have inherited from her father who
died intestate, but it was assigned to her cousin, Carlo Borromeo.
Guicciardini makes Pier Capponi say, “Tyrants are forced to watch
the action of every one, and to cast down those who seem to them
too powerful or too intelligent. Hence arose the wronging of the
Pazzi, by an iniquitous law which deprived them of the inheritance
of the Borromei, and the varied persecutions of the family, so that
desperation drove them into that conspiracy whence came such infinite
evils.” Francesco de’ Pazzi, Giovanni’s brother, described by Poliziano
as “a man of blood who, when he meditated any design, went straight
to his goal, being hindered by no regard for morality, religion,
reputation, or fair fame,” quitted Florence and went to Rome, where
the Pazzi had a banking house. He knew Sixtus IV. and was aware of his
hatred of the Medici, a hatred he gratified by appointing Cardinal
Francesco Salviati, a man of evil reputation and bitterly hostile
to Lorenzo, to the See of Pisa. At Rome Francesco de’ Pazzi became
intimate with the Pope’s so-called nephew, Count Girolamo Riario, Lord
of Imola; and Stefano Infessura, the well-informed Roman diarist,
affirms that “these things [_i. e._ the murder of the Medici] were
ordered by Pope Sixtus, together with the Count Girolamo and others,
in order to take away the dominion from Lorenzo and to confer it on
the Count Girolamo.” The dying confession of one of their instruments,
Giovanbattista di Montesecco, captain in the papal service, fully
confirms this.
[Illustration: COURTYARD OF PALAZZO PAZZI.]
Advantage was taken of the presence at Pisa of Riario’s nephew,
Raffaello, who had just been created a Cardinal. He was summoned to
Florence, and Lorenzo, as was his wont, invited him to an entertainment
at the Medici villa at Fiesole. The conspirators then determined to
murder the two brothers, but Giuliano, being ill, did not go, so the
attempt was postponed. Cardinal Raffaello expressing a desire to
hear mass in the cathedral of Florence, Lorenzo invited him to go on
Sunday, 26th April, and to dine at his palace in Via Larga afterwards.
The conspirators then settled, that at the elevation of the Host,
when it is customary for all to kneel, the deed should be done. Their
design was nearly frustrated by the refusal of Captain Montesecco to
commit a murder “where Christ would surely see him.” His place was
hastily filled by Stefano da Bagnoni, parish priest of Montemurlo, and
secretary to Jacopo de’ Pazzi, and by Antonio Maffei of Volterra, an
Apostolic notary, who were to kill Lorenzo; while Francesco de’ Pazzi
and one of his braves, Bernardo Bandini, were to fall on Giuliano.
Montesecco’s scruples proved fatal to the success of the plot, as the
two ecclesiastics blundered and only wounded Lorenzo slightly in the
neck. Francesco de’ Pazzi did his work with such fury that he inflicted
nineteen stabs on Giuliano, and wounded himself on the thigh. While
this was going on in the cathedral, the Archbishop Salviati went to
the Palazzo della Signoria, which he intended to seize, while Jacopo
de’ Pazzi was to incite the people to revolt. Cesare Petrucci, the
Gonfalonier, a shrewd man devoted to the Medici, was struck by the
Archbishop’s embarrassed manner and confused speech; so he suddenly
left the room, locked the door behind him and went to look out on
the Piazza. There he saw Jacopo de’ Pazzi and his followers shouting
“Liberty! liberty!” and at once ordered the gates of the palace to
be closed. Citizens came running with the news of the assassination
of Giuliano, and without a moment’s hesitation Petrucci seized the
Archbishop and hung him from the column of a window overlooking the
Piazza. Some of his followers, including Jacopo Poggio, son of the
historian, were hung beside their leader, the rest were cut down on the
staircase or in the courtyard. Francesco de’ Pazzi was seized in bed
at his own house, and naked and bleeding from the wound in his thigh
was hung by the side of the Archbishop, in whose shoulder he is said to
have fixed his teeth in his death agony.
Gugliemo Pazzi, who knew of, but did not participate in, the plot,
took refuge from the popular fury in the palace of his brother-in-law
Lorenzo de’ Medici. He was banished. Giovanni de’ Pazzi, the husband of
the Borromei heiress, eventually died in prison at Volterra, and the
seven sons of Francesco de’ Pazzi’s brother Piero were either hung,
condemned to perpetual exile, or to imprisonment for life. Jacopo was
caught while crossing the frontier into the Romagna, brought back to
Florence, and executed. His body was laid in the family vault in Sta.
Croce, but the mob disinterred it, dragged it through the streets to
his palace and battered the head against the door, amidst ironical
shouts that the master wanted to come in. At length the body was thrown
into the Arno, followed, as it floated down stream, by a jeering crowd.
In 1498 the fine palace was bought by Francesco Cibo, son of Pope
Innocent VIII. and at his death went to his son Lorenzo, whose wife
Ricciarda Malaspina was one of the many ladies admired by the base-born
Duke Alessandro de’ Medici. Her brother-in-law, the Archbishop of
Marseilles, then determined to murder the Duke. Varchi relates that
“when Alessandro went to the palace he used to sit on a certain chest
which was in the room of the Marchesana, very close to the bed in which
she slept. So the Archbishop planned to fill a similar chest with
gunpowder, and to set it in the place of the one the Duke was wont to
use, and it was to be so made that he might easily set fire to the
powder inside when the Duke sat on it. This he did because it seemed to
him that the close friendship and great familiarity between the Duke
and the Marchesana was a matter of reproach and most shameful. But
while all things necessary for carrying out his evil intent were being
prepared, the plot was discovered. He was imprisoned until the Emperor
came to Florence, when he was released and allowed to go where it best
pleased him.”
Some ladies of the Cibo family were the first to introduce carriages
into Florence in 1536, but Tommaso Rinnuccini writes: “They were
not common even in the beginning of the present [XVIIth] century,
and many of the nobility did not use them. Little by little, with
the excuse of a marriage, or other such pretext, many adopted them;
some with four, the richest even with six horses. At first they were
small, made of leather both inside and out, and placed immediately
over the axle, so that the movement was most uncomfortable; then they
were hung on straps, to be less rough, and finally the straps were
attached to carved bands of well-tempered steel which, yielding to any
shock, made them still more easy. The handsomest are of black, or of
coloured velvet, with fringes inside and out and the tops gilt inside.
Till the middle of the century some of the richer inhabitants of the
city used a _cocchio_, which was generally lined with rose-coloured
velvet and covered with purple cloth; on the top were eight gilt-knobs
(_pomi_), but these have gone entirely out of fashion. In 1672 a style
of carriage, hung on long straps, was introduced from Paris, which
swung and swayed to and fro; they are called _poltroncine_ (small
arm-chairs), because they are so comfortable.... At the time I write a
sort of covered chair, placed on two long poles, has been imported from
Paris; in front the poles rest on the back of a horse, and behind on
two wheels, and they swing much. To this chair has been given the name
of _calesso_, and in 1667 there were already near a thousand in the
city.”
Alberigo Cibo sold the fine old palace in 1593 to Lorenzo Strozzi, in
whose family it remained until bought by the Marquess Niccolò Quaratesi
in 1760. The family came originally from Castello di Quarata, and Vanni
Quaratesi took the side of the people, and was created a knight during
the Ciompi riots. Castello, who held high office at various times
in the first half of the XVth century, is said to have founded the
monastery of S. Salvadore at Monte San Miniato. But dates do not agree,
and Signor Passerini is probably right in suggesting that Castello
Quaratesi built a small convent for the Franciscans at S. Miniato after
the “Operai” of S. Croce refused to allow him to affix his arms on
the façade he had intended to build for the church. He left his large
fortune to the College of the Guild of Merchants, with a special clause
recommending the convent to their care, and they probably carried out
his wishes and erected the present church and conventual buildings,
designed by Cronaca towards the end of the XVth century. The first
Quaratesi houses were on the other side of the Arno, near the church
of S. Niccolò, where they lived until the Marquess Niccolò bought
the magnificent Pazzi palace built by Brunelleschi. In 1843 it again
changed hands, and passed into the possession of the Baron de Rast, who
left it by will to a charitable institution in Gotha.
It is curious that the well-known Pazzi arms, the three dolphins, said
to have been carved by Donatello, are still _in situ_ at the corner of
Borgo degl’Albizzi, for a decree of 1478 ordered them to be destroyed
all over the city. It is hardly likely that this shield was replaced
after the banishment of Piero de’ Medici, when the decree permitting
the descendants of Andrea de’ Pazzi to again put up their arms was
passed, because the palace no longer belonged to them. It is, however,
still called by their name, and the street corner to this day is known
as the “Canto de’ Pazzi.” It is here that the famous colombina, or
dove, beloved by all Florentines, flies on Holy Saturday along a cord
stretched from the door of the Bank of Italy, built on the site of the
greatest of the Pazzi palaces, to the wondrous old painted car, and
sets fire to the squibs and crackers piled high upon it.