_Piazza Pitti_
Buonaccorso Pitti, in his delightful chronicle,[55] tells us that the
Pitti, being Guelphs, were expelled from the castle of Semifonte by
the Ghibellines in 1202, when they divided into three branches. “We of
the third branch,” he writes, “settled at Castelvecchio in the Val di
Pesa, where we bought large and rich estates.... A few years later our
ancestors came to live in Florence, and their first houses were those
which now belong to the Machiavelli in the parish of Sta. Felicita.
I have heard tell by Neri, my father, that one of our ancestors,
named Bonsignore, went to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and to Sta.
Caterina on Mount Sinai; he never came back, nor is it known where he
died. When he left Florence his wife was with child, and she bore a son
who was called Bonsignore after his father. From him sprang Maffeo, who
was a rich, powerful and honourable citizen, and from the book in which
the names of all who have been Priors are written, it appears he was
a Prior in 1283. Maffeo had, amongst others, two sons; the eldest was
Ciore, the second Buonaccorso ... according to reliable accounts was a
good and trustworthy man.... By his wife Monna Giovanna degl’Infangati
he had six sons and three daughters.... Neri his son, our father, made
a very large fortune in the wool trade. I find that every year he made
eleven hundredweight of cloth, most of which was sent to Apulia. He
was most industrious and active in his business, and the French wool
that came into our workshops was turned into perfect cloth. His last
building was the Tiratoio,[56] which cost about 3,500 florins. It
seems he did not care about taking office under the Commune, but he
was twice Prior. He was a handsome man, three braccie in height, not
fat, but with good bone and muscle; his hair was reddish, and he was
healthy and vigorous and lived sixty-eight years, may God give him
eternal rest. His wife, my mother, Monna Curradina degl’ Strozzi, was
a handsome, clever woman, of dark complexion; she lived sixty-six
years. I, Buonaccorso, married Francesca degl’Albizzi ... and till now
Francesca and I have had eleven children, of whom seven are alive,
Luca, Ruberto, &c., &c.”
[Illustration: PALAZZO PITTI.]
Numerous were the adventures of Buonaccorso Pitti. Rich, able and
of fine presence, he was constantly employed on embassies to divers
sovereigns and sister Republics. An inveterate gambler, but with a
keen eye to business, generous to his family and friends, but keeping
a minute account of his daily expenses, well educated, a good Latin
scholar, a bad poet and an amusing boon-companion, Buonaccorso was a
typical Florentine of the XVth century. His son, Luca, born in 1398,
founder of the splendid palace which still bears his name, began his
political career when most lads are still at college, and his enormous
wealth gave him considerable power in his native city.
About 1440 Luca Pitti commissioned the great architect Brunelleschi
to build for him a palace more magnificent than that of the Medici
in Via Larga (now Palazzo Riccardi). “Not only,” writes Machiavelli,
“did citizens and private persons contribute, and aid him with things
necessary to the building, but communes and corporations lent him
help.” As Gonfalonier of Justice he was able to do signal service
to Cosimo de’ Medici by causing Girolamo Machiavelli, Carlo Benizzi
and Niccolò Barbadori, who had lifted up their voices to warn the
Florentine citizens against the ambition of the Medici, to be murdered
in prison. Cosimo in return used his influence to obtain a public
decree, ordaining that Luca Pitti should be created a Knight of the
People in S. Giovanni with great pomp; in memory thereof Luca added the
red cross, emblem of the People, to his arms. On the death of Cosimo,
who was succeeded by his infirm and gouty son Piero, Luca thought his
opportunity had come. Together with a far abler man, Diotisalvi Neroni,
he put himself at the head of the anti-Medicean party and Florence
was divided into two camps, the party of the Hill, so-called because
Luca’s palace stood on the highest point of the city; and of the
Plain, because the palace of the Medici was on the flat. But discord
soon broke out among the Hill party, as Luca perceived that if the
Medici were beaten Neroni, and not himself, would be the head of the
Republic; so in 1466 he made peace with Piero de’ Medici after which,
as Machiavelli tells us, “friends and relations avoided saluting him
in the streets. The superb edifices begun by him were abandoned by
the builders, the benefits bestowed on him in the past were changed
to injuries, the honours to insults. And many of those who had freely
given something of great value now demanded it back, as having been
merely lent; others who had been wont to praise him to the skies,
blamed him as an ungrateful and violent man. Wherefore too late did he
repent that he had not believed Niccolò Soderini, and sought rather
to die honoured with arms in hand, than live dishonoured amongst his
victorious enemies.”
Brunelleschi’s original design for Palazzo Pitti had only seven windows
to the front, and Herr von Fabriczy in _Filippo Brunelleschi Sein Leben
und Seine Werke_ writes: “The choice of such dimensions (59 metres wide
and 38 metres high) shows that he immediately grasped the advantages
of a position on sharply rising ground and knew how to use it as a
mighty factor for the desired effect.... In order to gauge the talent
with which Brunelleschi turned to signal advantage what in other hands
would have been a cause of failure, one need only imagine any one of
the Florentine palaces, with the exception of the Palazzo Vecchio,
in the place of the Pitti palace, to realize what a miserably meagre
impression they would make as the crowning edifice on the summit of the
steep hill.”
Vasari tells us “that Brunelleschi began and directed the building
up to the second-floor windows,” so it cannot have been roofed in
when Luca’s descendant Buonaccorso sold the huge unfinished pile to
Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I., for 9,000 golden florins (about
£5,400) in 1549. In the following spring Niccolò Braccini, better
known by his surname of Tribolo, began to lay out the adjacent garden,
the Grand Duchess having bought much land to enlarge it. The origin
of the name--Boboli--is unknown. Some say it is an Etruscan word,
others that a family called Borgoli owned the land, which then became
commonly known as Bogoli and, as often happens in Italy, the “g” was
changed into a “b.” Or it may be derived from the Tuscan name of the
hoopoe--bubula--which frequents the garden in spring uttering its
weird note hoop, hoop, hoop, among the ilex groves. However that may
be, Tribolo made a wonderful garden that has been the delight of many
generations.
The original plan by Brunelleschi having been lost, the famous
architect Ammannati was called in. He made considerable changes in the
interior, in the windows of the first floor, and, according to an old
manuscript, “finished the façade up to the roof.” He also built the
magnificent courtyard, but did not change the length or the height
of the palace, as is proved by a ground plan drawn twenty-four years
after his death, which shows the front with Brunelleschi’s original
seven windows. “In June, 1566,” writes Agostino Lapi in his Diary,
“was begun the splendid and imperial building of the magnificent
Palazzo Pitti of the city of Florence; that is to say, the new part in
the courtyard which is opposite the convent and the monastery of Sta.
Felicita--the façade and all the part facing the street and S. Spirito
being ancient, while the right and left sides of the courtyard are
modern and were begun in this century. Nearly all the stone, at least
all that is of good quality, used for the ‘bozzi’ and the pilasters and
suchlike, was quarried in the courtyard of the palace, the rest came
from the Belvedere and other parts of the garden; so that the stone
which adorns and beautifies the palace was quarried in the courtyard
or in various places in the garden, a thing most convenient for the
building. In the courtyard the old building on the side towards the
Porta a S. Pier Gattolini was demolished. There were many fine rooms
in the said courtyard, and a deep drain more than two feet wide which
received all the rain water and that which came from the kitchens and
other places, and passing under the said palace it carried off all
filth.... Maestro Bartolommeo Ammannati, the principal architect of the
new palace, told me that he had found the date of the commencement of
the old building, 1466, carved on a stone.”
In July, 1558, the marriage of Lucrezia de’ Medici, Cosimo’s daughter,
was solemnized in the chapel of the palace. One hundred and ten ladies,
resplendent in brocade dresses and many jewels, were assembled to
see the masquerade in five parts acted by young Florentine nobles.
First came twelve Indians, alarming, but very gorgeous; then twelve
Florentines habited as in ancient times; twelve Greeks in fine armour
followed; then twelve emperors blazing with jewels; finally came twelve
pilgrims with long mantles of cloth of gold, on which were emblazoned
cockle shells of silver, and music proper to the different character of
each masquerade was played by hidden musicians.
Later in the same year, Isabella, the most beautiful of Cosimo’s
daughters, was married to Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano. Her
beauty was enhanced by her many talents. She was a good musician; spoke
and wrote elegant Italian, Latin, French and Spanish; was a poetess and
an _improvisatrice_, and accompanied herself on the lute. Her father
doted on her, and opposed her departure for Rome with her husband.
The name of the beautiful young Duchess was soon coupled with that of
Troilo Orsini, her husband’s cousin, who had been left by him as her
guardian. Troilo became jealous of a handsome page, Lelio Torello,
whom he stabbed one night in the garden. After the death of Cosimo the
scandal reached the ears of Isabella’s husband, who came from Rome, and
with the connivance of her brother, the Grand Duke, strangled her at
his villa of Cerreto but a few days after her brother, Don Pietro, had
killed his lovely young Spanish wife at Cafaggiuolo.
The birth of the only son of Francesco I. and of Joan of Austria,
supposed to have been poisoned a few years later by Bianca Cappello,
was celebrated with great rejoicings; money was showered down among
the crowd from the windows of the Palazzo Pitti, and great butts of
wine were broached on the balustrade of the Palazzo Vecchio. Not only
did every man drink at will, but Settimanni declares that the Via
Vachereccia and the Mercato Nuovo ran with wine as far as the Ponte
Vecchio. Poor ugly, misshapen Joan had no happy life with her Medici
husband, who was completely under the dominion of the handsome and
dissolute Bianca Cappello, to whom he was secretly married in his
private chapel very soon after his wife’s death. A few months later
the Venetian Republic proclaimed Bianca a daughter of Venice, and the
marriage was then solemnized with great pomp in the cathedral, while a
tournament was held in the courtyard of the palace in her honour.
Montaigne, who was in Florence in 1580, notes in his delightful
_Journal_: “On Sunday I saw the Pitti Palace, and among other things
a mule in marble, which is the effigy of one that is still alive;
this honour has been paid on account of its long services in carrying
materials for the building, at least so says a Latin inscription. We
saw in the palace the Chimæra (antique), which has a head with horns
and ears coming out of its shoulders, and a body like a small lion.
On the preceding Saturday the Grand Duke’s palace was thrown open
and filled with peasants, to whom nothing was closed; they danced
in every corner of the large saloon. The concourse of this class of
people is, it seems to me, emblematic of their lost liberty, which
is thus evoked every year during the principal festival of the town”
[24th June, St. John’s Day]. The Grand Duke invited Montaigne to dine
at the palace, and he was evidently astonished at seeing Bianca take
the place of honour above her husband. “This Duchess is handsome,” he
writes, “according to the Italian idea, with an agreeable but imperious
countenance, a coarse figure and breasts to match. She seems to have
entirely subjugated the Prince, and to have had him under her dominion
for a long time.”
Torquato Tasso evidently admired the Grand Duchess, to whom he
addressed many madrigals and sonnets, often playing fancifully with her
“bel nome” Bianca, and praising her golden hair.
“Voi rosati e bei labri
E rosate le guancie avete ancora,
Come vermiglio Aurora,
E dorate le chiome
E bianca sete come il vostro nome.”
She must have been kind to the unhappy poet, who wrote, when sending to
her fifty madrigals in manuscript: “Had your Highness not experienced
both good and evil fortune, you would not so well understand the
misfortunes of others.” Her husband, Francesco de’ Medici, however,
declared he did not want a madman at his court; and when Tasso
returned to Florence in 1590 his patroness was dead, and he is
described as wandering about the Palazzo Pitti like a spectre, and the
Florentines wrote, _actumi est de eo_.
Francesco I. had a particular liking for fountains and grottoes. He
ordered four unfinished colossal statues, rough-hewn out of marble
by Michelangelo, to be used as supports for a mass of rockwork in a
grotto near one of the entrances to the Boboli gardens. These are
generally supposed to be four of the prisoners destined for the tomb
of Pope Giulio II., but according to J. A. Symonds, “this attribution
involves considerable difficulties. In the first place the scale is
different, and the stride of one of them, at any rate, is too wide
for the pedestals of that monument. Then their violent contortions
and ponderous adult forms seem to be at variance with the spirit of
the captives.... Their incompleteness baffles criticism; yet we feel
instinctively that they were meant for the open air and for effect at a
considerable distance.”
After the deaths of Francesco I. and of Bianca Cappello within a few
hours of each other at Poggio a Cajano, Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici
succeeded to the throne. Quitting the ecclesiastical state, he married
Christine of Lorraine in 1589, and to amuse his young, good-looking
French wife, gave entertainments which put to shame anything attempted
in our days. Buontalenti, that most ingenious of men, painter, sculptor
and architect, transformed the great courtyard of the Pitti palace
into an amphitheatre covered in with scarlet cloth, and erected a
castle on the side next the garden, while in the middle stood a
stockade containing fireworks. On the firing of a cannon a triumphal
car appeared, in which sat a magician who performed tricks of sleight
of hand, and told fortunes to those who desired. Then followed a huge
dragon drawing a chariot in which were the Duke of Mantua and Don
Pietro de’ Medici attended by musicians, who sang sweet songs in praise
of the bride. After them a mountain advanced without any visible
motor power; it opened in front of the Grand Duchess, and two knights
sprang out and challenged the others to mortal combat. “They fought,”
writes Baldinucci, “with lances and then with swords, and meanwhile
appeared the other masquerades, each one more beautiful and singular
than the last. To make our story short, there were fountains, clouds,
forests, shells, images of animals on chariots, ships, rocks, sirens,
birds and elephants of extraordinary size; then came a great mountain,
a crocodile and a conjurer, followed by a triumphal car, in which sat
Don Virginio Orsini with eight nymphs, who offered beautiful vases
filled with flowers and a programme of the festival, to the princes and
princesses, the ladies and the cavaliers. A garden then glided into
the amphitheatre, expanding and advancing without any visible agency,
and in a short time admirable designs, formed out of clumps of myrtle
and of box, such as ships, towers and castles, men, horses, pyramids
and the like, were seen, such as we make of plants in our gardens,
while the theatre was filled with sweet melody from the birds among the
trees. Don Virginio descended from his car and attacked an adversary
with his lance, whereupon all the other knights joined in the fray
until separated by the explosion of the fireworks, and this finished
the tournament. It was already four o’clock in the night when the
princes, the noble ladies and the cavaliers, were conducted into the
palace to a sumptuous banquet, and meanwhile the courtyard was filled
with most limpid water to the depth of four feet.... No less than
eighteen ships, large and small, among them a galleon of three decks,
arranged themselves in line of battle. To the sound of drums, pipes,
cymbals and other instruments used in naval warfare, and the firing of
cannon, the spectators again took their seats, wondering exceedingly at
the change that had taken place in so short a time. Thereupon a frigate
advanced towards the castle and was saluted by two cannon shot, when
with proper demonstrations of alarm she fled and returned to the fleet.
The Turks sent out four galleys, and then began a fierce battle, during
which fine set pieces of fireworks went off, burning even in the
water. Horrible cries of wounded Turks and imprecations in the Turkish
language were heard, as some fell into the artificial sea, and fought,
whilst swimming, with Christians who had also lost their footing. Soon
the water was covered with disabled ships and men who, acting their
parts well, attempted to save themselves by swimming.... In a short
time the Christians were victorious. They set fire to a Turkish galley,
of which the captain, soldiers and crew, with loud cries swam to the
castle, whilst the other ships surrendered. It was pretty to see how
the Christians, withdrawing somewhat after their victory, occupied
themselves in clearing the decks of their ships of broken tackle, and
in giving meat and drink to their crews before advancing in two lines
against the castle, firing so many broadsides that the air was filled
with smoke. Casting lines with hooks at one end, they scaled the walls,
and a hand-to-hand struggle took place ere the Christian soldiers
reached the top of the castle, where they hoisted their flag. Then with
joyous music, singing and dancing, the festival ended only just before
the break of day.”
Rejoicings in honour of the marriage continued for a month, during
which time more than two thousand strangers lived at the expense of
the court; nine thousand barrels of wine were emptied, and 6,056 scudi
were spent on sweetmeats. On the 12th June the Grand Duchess Christine
received the homage of the Florentine Senate in the beautiful saloon
of the Nicchie in the Palazzo Pitti, and thus ended the series of her
marriage festivities.
Ferdinando I. found full scope for exercising his love of splendour and
pomp when MM. de Sillery and d’Agincourt came to Florence to ask the
hand of his niece, Maria de’ Medici, for Henry IV. The contract was
signed on the 25th April, 1600, and on the 30th was solemnly announced
to the senate, nobles and principal citizens, in the throne room. The
bride, dressed with extraordinary magnificence, sat on the throne,
while the Grand Duke and Duchess sat below her. After the contract had
been read aloud the Grand Duke rose and, as is quaintly described,
“laying aside all air of majesty and sobbing for joy, was the first
to bend the knee and kiss the hem of his niece’s dress, as Queen of
France. After him followed the Grand Duchess and the dignitaries of the
court in their proper order, and then the whole court, the senate and
the nobility, accompanied the Queen in triumph, amid the acclamations
of the people, to the church of the S.S. Annunziata to give thanks to
God.”
Never did the Florentines pass such a summer. Every day brought some
entertainment more magnificent than that of the day before, and the
Palazzo Pitti resounded with music and gaiety. In October arrived
the Cardinal Aldobrandini, sent by the Pope to perform the marriage
ceremony. Don Antonio de’ Medici met him some miles outside the city
at the head of five hundred cavalry, and at the town gate he was
received by the Grand Duke under a velvet baldaquin, who escorted him,
walking on his left, to the palace. Cannon fired, trumpets sounded and
people cheered, as the Cardinal, followed by high dignitaries of the
Church and an enormous train of barons and cavaliers, passed through
Florence. On the 5th October Ferdinando I., as proxy for the King of
France, espoused his niece, Maria de’ Medici, and the inventive talents
of Buontalenti and of Giovanni da Bologna were taxed to the utmost
to provide extraordinary and unheard-of feasts and entertainments.
The former painted and arranged the wonderful scenery for Rinuccini’s
_Eurydice_, which was performed in the big saloon, with music by Jacopo
Peri, the inventor of recitative and the forerunner of Pergolesi,
Jomelli and Cimarosa.
Eight years later the palace witnessed yet more splendid entertainments
in honour of the marriage of Ferdinando’s eldest son Cosimo with Maria
Maddalena of Austria, and but a few months afterwards Ferdinando died,
and his body lay in state in the large hall of the palace.
During the brief reign of Cosimo II., Giulio Parigi, according to
Baldinucci, added to Palazzo Pitti on either side “by a design of regal
magnificence.” He increased Brunelleschi’s façade from seven windows to
thirteen; and his son, Alfonso, who succeeded him as chief architect
under Ferdinando II., again lengthened the palace by two large windows
on the ground floor on either side and five on the first, in which
state it remained for more than a hundred years, as can be seen in the
engraving by Zocchi, done in 1746. It was fortunate that so clever and
resourceful a man as Alfonso Parigi was court architect, for Baldinucci
tells us that “about 1640 the façade of the oldest part of the Palazzo
Pitti, from the second floor upwards, was seen to be out of the
perpendicular, inclining towards the Piazza more than 8 inches. This
might have been very serious had not Alfonso with talent, knowledge
and prompt courage, suggested a radical and efficacious remedy, and
effected it by drawing back the colossal wall, faced with huge rustic
stones, to its original place; securing it in such manner that it might
never again present so alarming a spectacle, and he did it in this way.
First he bored the wall of the façade in as many places as were needful
for placing certain large iron ties made on purpose by Pietro Zaballi,
a famous worker in iron of that time; these were secured with the usual
bars, only very big and strong, which afterwards were hidden under the
stone facing. He passed the ties under the floors and walls of the
passages and rooms of the said second floor, and at the extremities of
these same ties, at the back of the building, he placed the wonderful
instruments furnished with screws invented by himself. With these, by
means of certain levers, first one and then another was tightened and
pulled, so that this great force was exercised little by little, and
always equally. Thus almost insensibly, with the labour of but few men,
the great wall returned to its place, and to insure it for ever from
any new danger the ties were clenched also in the courtyard.”
About the same time Ferdinando II. ordered Pietro da Cortona and his
scholar Ciro Ferri to fresco the five large rooms on the first floor of
the Palace (now part of the picture gallery). “Each room,” Inghirami
tells us, “was distinguished by the name of a planet, and alluded to
the five principal virtues of his father, the Grand Duke Cosimo II. The
first, called Venus, signified benignity; the second, Apollo, stood
for splendour; the third, Mars, for strong government; the fourth,
Jupiter, for regal majesty and the recompense of merit; the fifth,
Saturn, signified prudence and profound knowledge. In such guise the
painter united mythology with history. The merit of these inventions
is due to Michelangelo Buonarroti, a writer of much merit, surnamed
the ‘Younger,’ to distinguish him from the famous artist of this name,
who was his uncle.” In these rooms the Grand Duke hung his favourite
pictures, and ordered the director Puccini to bring several back from
the Uffizi, which had at various times been removed from the Pitti.
Among these were the Madonna della Seggiola, and the portrait of Leo
X. by Raphael. The beautiful Madonna del Granduca, also by Raphael,
was bought by the Grand Duke for 300 zecchins, and the fine pictures
inherited by his wife Vittoria della Rovere from her father, the Duke
of Urbino, increased the treasures of the gallery, which may be said to
have been begun by Ferdinando II.
John Evelyn, who was in Florence in 1644, evidently thought the
lengthening of the Palazzo Pitti an improvement, as he writes in his
diary that it had been “of late greatly beautified by Cosimo with huge
stones of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders, with a terrace
at each side having rustic uncut balustrades, with a fountain that
ends in a cascade seen from the great gate, and so forming a vista
to the gardens. Nothing is more admirable than the vacant staircase,
marbles, statues, urns, pictures, court, grotto, and waterworks. In
the quadrangle is a huge jetto of water in a volto of four faces,
with noble statues at each square, especially the Diana of porphyry
above the grotto. We were here showed a prodigious great loadstone.
The garden has every variety, hills, dales, rocks, groves, aviaries,
vivaries, fountains, especially one of five jettos, the middle basin
being one of the longest stones I ever saw. Here is everything to make
such a paradise delightful. In the garden I saw a rose grafted on an
orange-tree. There was much topiary-work, and columns in architecture
about the hedges. The Duke has added an ample laboratory, over against
which stands a fort on a hill, where they told us his treasure is kept.
In this palace the Duke ordinarily resides, living with his Swiss
guards, after the frugal Italian way, and even selling what he can
spare of his wines, at the cellar under his very house, wicker bottles
dangling over even the chief entrance into the Palace, serving for a
vintner’s bush.”
In honour of the visit of the Princess Anna de’ Medici with her
husband, the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his two brothers,
and of the Duke of Mantua and his wife, who was a Medici, splendid
festivals were given in the Palazzo Pitti, while a ballet on horseback,
led by Cosimo, the youthful heir to the throne, was performed in the
amphitheatre in the Boboli gardens by fifty-two cavaliers magnificently
dressed and mounted on well-broken horses. Little did the spectators
think that the young prince, who made his barb curvet so proudly, would
become an odious bigot and the laughing-stock of Europe, on account of
his dissensions with his wife, Marguerite Louise of Orleans. The old
palace has witnessed many strange scenes, but few stranger than that
of a French princess amusing herself by tickling her cook. Vincenzio
Martinelli, in letters written in Italian chiefly to English friends,
and published in London in 1758, gives a curious description of the
tom-boy games of Marguerite Louise. “Cosimo had obliged the Grand
Duchess to send back to France all the gentlemen and ladies of her
court, and only one Frenchman, a cook, remained. The Grand Duke gave
himself up to devotion and solitude and governed his family, as he did
his state, like Tiberius, and allowed his wife no amusement save a
small concert for two or three hours every evening. The Grand Duchess,
who was very young, found these concerts monotonous, or perhaps, being
born in France, did not care for Italian music, so as a diversion she
used to send for her French cook, who came with his long apron and
white cap, just as he was dressed for cooking the dinner. Now this cook
either dreaded, or pretended to dread, being tickled, and the princess,
aware of his weakness, took great pleasure in tickling him, while he
made all those contortions, screams and cries proper to people who
cannot bear to be tickled. Thus the princess tickled the cook, and he
defended himself, shouting and running from one side of the room to the
other, which made her laugh immoderately. When tired of such romps she
would take a pillow from her bed and belabour the cook on the face and
on the body, whilst he, shouting aloud, hid himself now under, now on,
the very bed of the princess, where she continued to beat him, until
tired out with laughing and beating she sank exhausted into a chair.
While these games were going on the musicians stopped their music, and
as soon as the princess sat down they recommenced. This noble amusement
continued for some time before the Grand Duke knew of it; but one
evening it happened that the cook was very drunk, and therefore shouted
louder than usual, and the Grand Duke, whose apartments were five or
six rooms distant from those of the Grand Duchess, heard the noise and
went to discover the cause. As he entered the room the Grand Duchess
was just beating her cook with a pillow on the grand-ducal bed, and the
Prince, horrified at so novel a sight, instantly condemned the cook to
the galleys (but I believe he was eventually pardoned), and scolding
the lady with the utmost severity, with a bearing more princely than
marital, he forbad her ever again to indulge in such conduct. The
princess resented being thus taken to task in the presence of the
musicians, perchance with less consideration than she thought due to
her high rank, and was exceedingly angry. After passing the whole night
in fury and in tears she determined to return to France, and sent one
of her gentlemen to the Grand Duke to inform him of her resolution. He,
who desired nothing better, as he feared his family might multiply like
that of Priam, coldly replied that the Grand Duchess had better reflect
on the consequences of such a step, which he would in no way oppose.”
It ended by the Grand Duchess returning to France, leaving two sons and
a daughter, who were the last of the great house of Medici.
After the death of Giovan Gastone in 1738, last surviving son of Cosimo
III., Tuscany was given by the treaty of Vienna to Francesco, Duke of
Lorraine, husband of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, in exchange
for his hereditary estates which were ceded to France. Tuscany was
then governed by regents, and of one of these, Marshal Botta, Sir
Horace Mann writes to his friend Walpole: “He has made sad work in the
Palazzo, and in the garden. His arrangement of the pictures is to make
it depend, first upon the freshness of the gilding upon the frames,
and then upon the position of the figures in each picture, which
figures must not turn their back to the throne. Luther and Calvin, by
Giordano, were turned out with a most pious contempt, as not worthy
to stand in the presence of so orthodox a prince as is coming here.
His mother (Maria Theresa) will not permit any picture to hang in her
apartment that shows either a naked leg or arm. This ill agrees with
the Medici taste, or the collection they have left. Imagine that grave
matron (Maria Theresa) running the gauntlet through the gallery. Ah!
quelle horreur!... A famous picture, by Titian, was turned out of the
room where the canopy is, because the figure almost turned its back to
it, and none are to be admitted there but such as respectfully present
their faces to it. The picture of Luther and Calvin was dismissed with
a Catholick fury, and, I fear, will find no better place than in that
horrid ill-painted room of Hell, at the end of the apartment, that
the young prince may see how the enemies of the Church ought to be
treated. You will think I exaggerate, but what I have said is literally
and ludicrously true. Botta tells the Florentines who criticise his
operations, that he knows more of architecture and painting than Andrea
del Sarto, or their ancestors who invented their Tuscan Order. Such
are his occupations, for as to government, _célà va son train_. Nobody
interferes, and nothing can be taxed higher than it is.... The farmers
of the revenue, though Tuscans, are more rigorous than the receivers
or collectors used to be under the Medici, who were indulgent to their
subjects, and spent their revenues amongst them. This will not be the
case for some time, though a young prince is coming, for the emperor
will still have the principal share.”[57]
Botta had been busy for some time arranging the Palazzo Pitti, which
had been untenanted since the death, in January, 1743, of the Princess
Palatine, last of the Medici. Like all her family she had artistic
tastes, and the Dutch pictures now in the Uffizi were collected by her
and left to Tuscany. Huge pier glasses and Rococo furniture were bought
to furnish the empty rooms on the first floor (where now the picture
gallery is), “but,” writes Mann, “everything is calculated for the
Meridian of Germany--nay, of Muscovy. Stoves and chimneys in every
room. For the furniture the _gout_ is not less Gothick.”
A few days after the marriage of Leopoldo of Austria with Maria
Louisa of Spain, his father died suddenly at Innsbruck, and the fate
of Tuscany was changed. The Emperor Joseph II. ordered his brother
Leopoldo to be proclaimed Grand Duke, instead of Regent, and Mann
writes, “The Florentines seem very sensible of their good fortune in
having a prince again to live among them, after thirty years’ bondage
under unexperienced Lorrain ministers and others, so little fit and
desirous to contribute to their welfare.”...
Though Marshal Botta made “sad work” inside the palace, he employed
a good architect, G. Ruggeri, for the outside, who in 1764 began the
great loggiata, or projecting colonnade, at the north end of the
façade, where now is the entrance to the picture gallery. To him is
also due the credit of taking advantage of the steep slope to create
the bastion or terrace, but of a different shape from what we now see.
The corresponding bastion on the opposite side was added by the Grand
Duke Leopoldo I. in 1783 under G. Paoletti, who also designed and half
finished the Palazzina della Meridiana, an adjunct to the Palazzo Pitti
on the garden side, where he cleverly took advantage of the lie of the
land to make the entrance on a level with the second floor of the great
palace.
The Palazzo Pitti had already been despoiled of many of its valuable
contents accumulated by the Medici, and Leopoldo I. though an able
administrator and lawgiver, must have been sadly lacking in taste,
as during his reign many of the fine old ceilings were abolished in
favour of sham vaults made of lath and plaster. On succeeding his
brother as Emperor of Austria in 1790, his second son, Ferdinando, was
made Grand Duke of Tuscany, and when General Napoleon Bonaparte came
to Florence in 1796, Ferdinando III. asked him to dine, and received
him with almost royal honours. Not long afterwards General Sérurier
occupied Lucca, where he levied a tax of seven millions, and a few days
later he requested the Grand Duke of Tuscany to supply him with the
same amount--but as a loan. Convinced that it would never be repaid
and unwilling to burthen his people with heavy taxes, Ferdinando III.
emptied the coffers of the state, took the reserve of silver bars from
the mint and, to make up the sum, melted down a quantity of gold vases
and plate which he collected from the various grand ducal villas, and
from the Palazzo Pitti.
Three years later the French troops entered Florence with General
Gaulthier at their head. He dismounted at the Palazzo Riccardi, and
immediately sent a company of soldiers with colours flying and band
playing to mount guard at the royal palace. At eight o’clock next
morning the Commissary-General for Tuscany, M. Reinhard, drove to the
Palazzo Pitti and presented his credentials from the Directoire to the
Grand Duke Ferdinando, with an order that he was to leave Tuscany at
once. The Grand Duke met him on the threshold, received the letter,
turned on his heel and re-entered the palace without saying a word.
The night was spent in hurried preparations for departure, and before
sunrise next morning a sad little procession of court coaches left
the Palazzo Pitti. That afternoon a tree of liberty was set up in the
Piazza Sta. Croce, and another in the Piazza Sta. Maria Novella, amid
the shouts of half drunken French soldiers.[58]
A new kingdom--Etruria--was then created by Napoleon and bestowed
on Don Lodovico of Bourbon, son of the Duke of Parma, married to a
daughter of Charles IV. of Spain. The bridegroom and bride went to
Paris, and were received by the First Consul and his wife Josephine
with great honour. They became so intimate that the young King of
Etruria lost his shyness, and amused the court after dinner by turning
somersaults and playing leap-frog with the officers. Murat, the
brilliant husband of Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s favourite sister,
went to Florence in January, 1801, to prepare for the sovereigns of
the new Kingdom of Etruria, which the Tuscans declined to believe in.
Every Friday, when the _fattori_, country priests and peasants, came
in to the market at Florence (as they do to this day), they looked to
see if the arms of Ferdinando III. were still above the portal of the
Palazzo Vecchio, and returned home declaring that the King of Etruria
was an invention of the French, in order to remain a little longer in
“la bella Firenze.”
The manner of proclaiming the King was original and worthy of his
reputation for turning somersaults. On the evening of the 28th July
came news that the sovereigns were at Parma on their way to Florence. A
serenade was immediately improvised, and Murat was greeted with shouts
of “_Viva la Francia, Viva Giovacchino_,” to which he answered, “_Viva
l’Etruria, Viva il Re d’Etruria_.” He then went to the Pergola, where
the favourite Nunziatina Pastori was dancing in a ballet called the
“Kingdom of Terpsichore.” As he entered the royal box she improvised
a new _pas_ (no doubt already carefully rehearsed beforehand), and
bounded on to the stage holding three cards, on which something was
written which she carefully concealed from the public and from her
companion, a well-known dancer named Berti, who represented Mercury.
Mercury chased Terpsichore and when at last he caught her, she drew a
dart from his belt and threw it at the cards she had let fall in her
flight. Escaping from Mercury, she seized the card pierced with his
dart and showed it to the house. On it was written _Viva Lodovico I. Re
d’Etruria_ in large letters. She was greeted with tremendous applause
and Murat exclaimed, “Qu’elle est charmante, la petite Nunziatine,
qu’elle est jolie; c’est touchant, n’est ce pas, cette façon
d’annoncer l’arrivée du Roi d’Etrurie.”
At last, on the 10th August, the King and Queen entered Florence in
great state, and greeted their new subjects from the balcony of the
Palazzo Pitti. Soon afterwards Murat and his beautiful wife left with
an immense suite for Bologna, to the delight of the Florentines who
hoped to be delivered from the French occupation which was eating up
the country.
The young sovereigns found an exhausted treasury and an impoverished
peasantry, and were forced to make a loan of 800,000 francs at the
enormous interest of 37 per cent., to pay which they pledged the
revenues of the post-office and the custom house. Lodovico had never
been strong. He died in May, 1802, leaving Maria Louisa Regent,
who presented the little King to his subjects from a window of the
Palazzo Pitti. In the autumn Pauline Bonaparte and her husband, Prince
Borghese, came to Florence, and nothing was spoken of but the beauty
and grace of the woman of whom Canova declared “that her figure, the
shape of her skull, and the way her head was set on her shoulders,
had never been equalled since the days of Diana and Calypso.” The
Queen of Etruria received her with royal honours, and memoirs of that
time describe her entrance into the throne room as a wonderful sight.
Dressed in flowing white robes and covered from head to foot with
jewels, Pauline slowly walked, or rather glided, towards fat little
Maria Louisa who, weighed down by a heavy black velvet dress, looked
anything but royal. In 1807 the Emperor Napoleon curtly signified to
the Queen that Etruria had ceased to exist, and now formed part of the
French Empire. Her prayers and entreaties were in vain, and on the 10th
December again a sad little procession left the palace, escorted by
French cavalry.
General Menou, who now governed Tuscany, made himself ridiculous by
his passion for an awkward and vulgar dancer, to whom, when at last
convinced that dancing was not her strong point, he had singing lessons
given in his apartments in the Pitti palace, at which he assisted.
He ostentatiously attended mass and affected great deference to the
clergy, but his conversion to Islam in Egypt, where he had changed his
name to Abdallah and married a Turkish lady, Zebedeeh el-Bahouad, had
made too great a sensation for his new-born piety to have much effect.
The Emperor’s sister Elisa, married to Felix Baciocchi, who was already
Princess of Piombino, was created Grand Duchess of Tuscany in March,
1809. She despatched her favourite equerry, Cenami, to Florence with
orders to turn General Menou and his mistress out of the Palazzo
Pitti, and prepare for her arrival. But with Napoleonic impulsiveness
she left Lucca the following evening with her husband, escorted by
a few French soldiers, and at daybreak entered the Palazzo Pitti.
The shutters were thrown open and Elisa walked proudly through the
magnificent rooms which were now to be her home. An officer was sent to
order a salvo of twenty-one cannon to be fired as an intimation to her
astonished subjects of her arrival. That evening she went in state to
the Pergola and was vociferously cheered. Her likeness to the Emperor
was remarkable, and she held herself majestically. “Of all our three
sisters,” said Joseph Bonaparte, “Elisa was the one who, morally and
physically, most resembled Napoleon.”
Elisa soon won the hearts of the people, but many of the aristocracy
and the higher bourgeosie, encouraged by the clergy, held aloof. She
was much annoyed at the position held by the Countess of Albany, who
was treated as the widow of a royal personage, and openly professed
Alfieri’s sentiments about France and encouraged seditious language
at her house. So Elisa privately obtained from Fouché, then head of
the police, an order of banishment against the Countess, and charged
General Menou to tell her of the decree, and to express the sorrow
and astonishment of the Grand Duchess at so stringent a measure. Menou
suggested to the Countess to ask for an audience, which was arranged
with some difficulty as she insisted on being received as the widow of
the King of England. She drove up to the Palazzo Pitti in her state
coach, and was conducted through a suite of rooms into a small boudoir
where Elisa, under pretence of sudden indisposition, lay in bed. She
only saluted the Countess, in return for her formal curtseys, by an
inclination of the head, and after listening to her with assumed
interest and sympathy brusquely exclaimed, “Why, dear Countess, was
Alfieri so declared an enemy of France?” “You show me that he was
perfectly right,” answered the Countess of Albany, rising, and turning
her back on the Grand Duchess, she walked out of the room without
another word. Two days later she was exiled, and all Florence took her
part. A magnificent _fête_ was given at the Pitti palace to celebrate
the victory of Wagram. The gardens were illuminated and a balloon, in
the shape of the imperial eagle holding a thunderbolt, was sent up;
but the court of the Grand Duchess was forsaken, and the common people
amused themselves by making a cock drunk and hunting it through the
streets.
The disastrous retreat of the Grande Armée from Moscow was followed by
General Nugent’s proclamation to the Italian people, promulgated at
Ravenna on the 10th December, 1813, and the advance of the Neapolitan
troops under Murat, who appeared at the gates of Florence on the 13th
January, 1814. He was received with shouts of joy by the populace, who
rushed to the Palazzo Pitti, and would have forced an entrance but for
the intervention of the Syndic. Like the Queen of Etruria, the Grand
Duchess had to fly, but her escort were forced to draw their swords
to protect her from the mob. In September Ferdinando III. re-entered
Florence, to the joy of the Tuscans, sick to death of foreign rulers,
who hoped for a period of peace and quiet under a prince born in the
Pitti palace, whom they regarded as a Florentine. In 1818 he bought so
many pictures at the Gerini sale that another room, the Hall of the
Iliad, frescoed by Sabatelli, was added to the great Pitti gallery. In
1824 he was succeeded by his son, Leopoldo II., under whose reign the
architect P. Poccianti made great changes in the palace. Various small
rooms were conveted into the fine atrium, or entrance hall, leading
into Ammannati’s superb courtyard, and at an enormous expense the great
staircase was built, in lieu of the old, narrow, steep one.[59] The
superb gallery was thrown open to the public on Sundays and holidays in
1833.
Leopoldo was incapable of grasping the new ideas then surging
throughout Italy. Too late he was induced to grant a free constitution,
revolution burst out in Florence, the Republic was proclaimed, and in
1839 the Grand Duke fled, only to be reinstated a few months later.
Nine miserable years of foreign occupation followed, until in 1848
Leopoldo quitted the Pitti palace by the side gate of the Boboli
gardens. Driving out of the Porta Romana, and round the city walls to
the Porta San Gallo, he went on his way to Vienna. Not a hat was raised
as the hated Austrian passed; in dead silence carriages and escort went
by at full gallop, as though afraid of hostile demonstrations.
Very different was the scene on the 16th April, 1860, when King Victor
Emanuel entered Florence amid such enthusiasm as has seldom been seen.
The closing words of his speech to the parliament a fortnight before
had struck a chord which vibrated in every heart. “La patria, la quale
non è piu l’Italia dei Romani, nè quella del Medio Evo; non deve essere
piu il campo aperto delle ambizione straniere, ma deve esere bensì
l’Italia degl’Italiani.”