_Borgo de’ Greci. No. 10._
The first mention of the Peruzzi family occurs in 1150, when Ubaldino,
son of Peruzzo of the Porta della Pera, appeared as a witness about a
contract with the convent of S. Salvi. At Montaperti the Peruzzi fought
on the side of the Guelphs, when Arnoldo was knighted on the field of
battle, and with the rest of their party were exiled until peace was
made between Ghibellines and Guelphs in 1280. Nine years later the name
of Arnoldo’s son Pacino is mentioned in the archives of the Commune,
as receiving rent for certain prisons in his palace on the site of the
old Roman amphitheatre, where 800 Aretines and Ghibellines taken in the
battle of Campaldino were immured. The name of the street behind S.
Firenze, Via di Burella (prison or den), still records their existence.
No doubt these were the dens of the wild beasts under the ancient
amphitheatre in which S. Miniatus was twice exposed to lions under the
Emperor Decius. The circular form can still be traced in the thick
walls of the old Peruzzi houses in the Piazza. In 1293 Pacino appears
as a purchaser from the Commune of that part of the old walls of the
second circuit of Florence which stood where now is Via de’ Benci
and the Arco de’ Peruzzi.[53] Four years later he was one of the nine
Gonfaloniers of Justice of the family, who also had fifty-four Priors.
They were among the richest and most powerful citizens of the XIIIth
century, and when King Robert of Naples came to Florence in 1310 he
was lodged and magnificently entertained for twenty-four days in their
palaces in Piazza de’ Peruzzi. Here was their loggia, used as a kind of
private exchange, to which the Arco de’ Peruzzi may have belonged. It
stands either on the very spot, or at all events close to where once
was--
“The gateway, named from those of Pera.”[54]
Vasari tells us that Paolo Uccello frescoed the arch “with triangles
in perspective, and on the corners in the square spaces he painted
the four elements, each represented by an appropriate animal. For the
earth a mole, for water a fish, for fire a salamander, and for air a
chameleon, which lives thereon and assumes every colour. As he had
never seen a chameleon he painted a camel with its mouth wide open
inhaling the air to fill its lungs. Showing certes great simplicity.”
[Illustration: PIAZZA AND ARCO DE’ PERUZZI.]
Many of the houses on the western side of the Via de’ Benci belonged to
the Peruzzi, others were in Borgo de’ Greci, where the present palace
stands, and in the Via dell’Anguillara, the Via de’ Rustici, etc.,
the well-known coat-of-arms with six pears is still to be seen here
and there on the façades. In 1339 the Peruzzi were ruined and forced
to sell their lands and many of their houses. They and their partners
the Bardi had lent money to Edward III. of England, who, owing to his
wars with France, was unable to pay his debts. A decree dated 6th May,
1339, orders the suspension of all payments to the King’s creditors,
“not excepting his well-beloved Bardi and Peruzzi,” to whom he owed
1,355,000 golden florins. The failure of the great banking house of
Bardi Peruzzi was a calamity from which Florence did not recover for
some time, and Dino Compagni, who suffered severely himself, exclaims:
“O cursed and insatiable avidity, born of the vice of avarice which
reigns amongst our blind and mad citizens who, for the sake of gaining
from those above them, place their own and other people’s money in
their power. For this was lost the strength of our Republic, as but
little wealth remained to our citizens, save to some artificers and
money-lenders who by usury consumed and gathered to themselves the
scattered remnants of the poverty of our citizens.”
The Peruzzi houses must have been used by the Signoria for lodging
distinguished guests, as Villani writes: “On the 10th March [1345]
the wife of the Prince of Taranto, daughter to the Duke of Bourbon,
who called herself Empress of Constantinople without possessing an
Empire, passed through Florence on her way to France. Great honour
was paid to her, she being met and accompanied by many knights and
ladies. She dismounted at the house of the Peruzzi, the Commune paying
all the expenses of her coming and her going and of the two days she
stayed in the city;” and nearly a century later, when the Greek Emperor
Paleologus and the Patriarch came to attend the council of Florence
“the whole circuit of the houses of the Peruzzi were assigned to them
as their residence.” It is said that the street was called Borgo de’
Greci in memory of the Emperor’s visit; Passerini, however, thinks the
name was older, and derived from a family called Greci, who lived there.
Ridolfo Peruzzi joined Rinaldo degl’Albizzi in opposing the return
of Cosimo the Elder, and, like him, was banished, and all he had
confiscated. He died in exile at Aquila in 1440, and as long as the
rule of the Medici lasted the name of Peruzzi no longer appears among
the magistrates of Florence. Among those of the family who found
it impossible to live under them was Antonio, “a noble citizen of
Florence,” writes Vasari, “who went to Volterra to live more quietly,
and there after a time married in 1482, and in a few years had two
children, a son named Baldassare, and a daughter, Virginia. But it
happened that war, persecuting him who sought only peace and quiet,
broke out, and Volterra was sacked; so Antonio was forced to fly
to Siena, where, having lost nearly all he possessed, he lived in
poverty.” Baldassare Peruzzi’s whole life was a perpetual struggle, he
was miserably paid, and his name as painter, architect and decorator,
stood higher after his death than during his life. He died at the age
of fifty-eight, probably of poison.
In the latter half of the last century the name of Ubaldino Peruzzi was
a household word in Florence. An honest politician and a kind man, he
had a great deal of the peculiar Florentine humour and his favourite
saying, “Gente allegra, Iddio l’aiuta,” was typical of the man. His
wife was as popular as himself, and in their old palace in Borgo
de’ Greci one was sure to meet every distinguished Italian and any
foreigner of mark who chanced to be in Florence.