_Via Gino Capponi. No. 11._
A palace built by Don Luigi di Toledo was bought by the Guadagni family
in the XVIth century, and Gherardo Silvani was commissioned to enlarge
it, incorporating part of the old palace in the new one. Silvani
succeeded in making a handsome building, and the trim garden with
pleached hedges suits the stately loggie and arched corridors.
This was the house about which the Pretender and Lord Cowper went to
law. That delightful old gossip Sir Horace Mann writes to Walpole in
1776: “The quarrel was about a house, which he [Charles Edward] wanted
to buy; but some obstacles obstructed the conclusion of the bargain.
In the mean time Lady Cowper wanted a more proper house than her own
to lay in; and proposals were made to the proprietor, to have it for
a certain number of months, and he inclined to let it to Lord Cowper.
This displeased the Comte Albanie, and the dispute was carried to a
publick tribunal, which decided in the Comte’s favour. This displeased
the Great Duke, who favoured the Cowpers. In short, the whole town took
part in it, but I dissuaded my Lord from making an appeal to another
court, so that the Albanies now reside in it; though the contract
heightened the price considerably. What the Comte complained of most
was, that he should meet with so rebellious an opposition from one of
his own subjects. The ladies still vye with each other in beauty, so
that they can never more be friends.” The following year Sir Horace
again mentions the Pretender: “I have told you how dangerously ill
the Count Albanie has been. His physicians sent to inform me that a
mortification had begun in his legs, that his body was swelled, and
that the _affanno_ was great, so that he thought him to be in the most
imminent danger. This account was sent post to Rome to his brother
and the Countess.... He made a will in a hurry; and it has been said,
in joke, that he has bequeathed his three kingdoms to the son of the
Great Duke, in example of what King Theodore did, by leaving his crown
to his creditors.... I formerly gave you an account of the _fracas_ in
the Pretender’s family, by the elopement of his wife, whom everybody
then pitied and applauded. The tables are now turned. The cat, at last,
is out of the bag. The Cardinal of York’s visit to his brother gave
the latter an opportunity to undeceive him, by proving to him that the
complaints laid to his charge, of ill-using her, were invented to cover
a plot formed by Count Alfieri, who (by working up Tragedies, of which
he has wrote many, is most expert, though he always kept behind the
curtain) had imposed upon the Great Duke, the Pope and the Cardinal,
and all those who took her part. All that he said on that subject, at
a time that he thought himself and was supposed by everybody to be in
the most imminent danger, made a great impression on his brother, who,
on his return to Rome, exposed the whole to the Pope, and obtained an
order from him to Count Alfieri to leave the Pope’s state in fifteen
days. Not content with that satisfaction, the imprudent Cardinal
(for a more silly mortal never existed) published the whole of the
Countess’s intrigues with Alfieri. This has exasperated all the Roman
Nobility against the Cardinal, insomuch that, instead of considering
the delinquencies of the parties, their wrath is turned against the
publisher of the scandal; and they compassionate the situation of the
disconsolate lady who, I really believe, will marry the Count a week
after she becomes a widow.”
In July the following year Charles Edward acknowledged his natural
daughter by Mrs. Walsingham, under the title of Lady Charlotte Stuart,
Duchess of Albany, and Mann reports: “She is allowed to be of a good
figure, tall, and well made, but that the features of her face resemble
too much those of her father to be handsome. She is gay, lively, very
affable, and has the behaviour of a well-bred Frenchwoman, without
assuming the least distinction among our ladies on account of her new
dignity.... The new Duchess has appeared at the Theatres (which were
crowded on her account) with all her father’s jewels, which are very
fine.... Poor Count Albine,” writes Sir Horace again in December,
“decays every day, visibly. His daughter did well to come in time to
reap his succession, for which she will not wait long. The faculties of
his mind are as weak as his body.”
After the death of Charles Edward the palace became the residence of
the British Minister to the Court of Tuscany. Charles Greville, who was
in Florence in 1830, writes: “I breakfasted with Lord Normanby, who has
got a house extending 200 feet in front, court, garden and stables,
for about £280 a year. His house was originally fitted up for the
Pretender, and C.R.’s are still to be seen all over the place.”
The Velluti-Zati, Dukes of San Clemente, to whom the palace now
belongs, descend from one of those great merchant families of Florence
whose members were able to turn their hands and their brains to
anything. The first time the name occurs is early in the XIIIth century
when Piero di Berto, surnamed Velluti, had a cloth factory in Oltrarno,
and dealt largely in wool. His son Buonaccorso fought at Montaperti
in 1260, and when he died thirty-six years later was reputed to be
one of the richest merchants in Italy. He built a palace and a tower,
together with factories and houses for his workpeople, on a _podere_,
or farm, called La Casellina (Via de’ Velluti and Via de’ Vellutini
still mark the site). The Corsini, the Ridolfi and the Corbinelli built
such fine houses near his, that the street was called the Via Maggiore
(afterwards shortened into Via Maggio).
Lippo, Buonaccorso’s son, was the first of twenty-nine Priors of
his house, and many of the Velluti filled important posts under the
Republic as ambassadors to Lucca, Naples and Tunis, and as governors
of various subject towns. One of the most famous of the family, and
eminent as a jurist, was Donato, born in 1313. He filled the important
post of Gonfalonier of Justice several times, was elected advocate
of the poor, went to Bologna as ambassador in 1344, and in the same
year was sent to Arezzo to quell a rebellion that had broken out in
that city. A few months later, he represented the Commune of Florence
in negotiating a peace between Perugia and Siena. Donato Velluti was
several times ambassador to various courts of Europe, and wrote a
chronicle which deals chiefly with family matters. In reading it one
gathers how terrible the plague must have been in those days. Instead
of mentioning a year, he perpetually dates events as “before (or after)
the great mortality.” He nearly died of it, and records that he owed
his life to the devotion of his wife Monna Bice de’ Covoni, “for hardly
one in a hundred escaped.” Agnolo degl’Albizzi, husband of his wife’s
sister Monna Ginevra, died of the plague of 1348, and Ginevra of the
next epidemic in 1363. She had been left with four small boys, whose
story, as related by Donato, will give an idea of the greater part of
the chronicle. “Giano, son of the said Monna Ginevra, notwithstanding
the sound and severe whippings received from her, showed signs of being
a good-for-nothing and wicked youth; for his evil conduct his relations
put him in prison some time ago, and there he still is. Paolo, the
second son, gave hopes of becoming a good youth when in the bank of
the Covoni, and did well until he took to running after women and
idling about, thus wasting his time. He has now reformed and is doing
well, and will become an honest man and a good relation. Filippo, the
third son, is of no account, neither good nor bad, and has been made a
monk in S. Miniato a Monte, all he was fit for. Antonio, the youngest
boy, will be a good man if he continues as he has begun. He is now in
Provence.”[88]
Paolo, a descendant of Donato, carried on the good traditions of his
house, and began a chronicle in 1555, when he was fifty-five years of
age. It gives a curious description of the relations between a merchant
and a king of one of the proudest nations in Europe, and so pleasing a
picture of honest Paolo himself that one is sadly tempted to translate
the whole of it. Of his ancestor Andrea, a son of Donato the jurist, he
writes: “He was a most excellent man, expert in his trade and active,
and God-fearing. He always attended the first mass in S. Spirito and
then went about his business in which he made large profits, as he
began to trade after the great mortality of 1448, at which time goods
were sold for ready money, so the gains were large. Piero, his son,
preserved, but did not augment his patrimony as he might have done
had he paid attention to the business. Andrea, eldest son of the said
Piero, was tall, well made and of a fine presence, courageous and very
hot-tempered when young, cantankerous and quarrelsome; his mother and
his sister Maria offered up many prayers for him, and as it pleased God
he was seized with a desire to go abroad. He went to Spain with a horse
and nine ducats in his pocket, where he did so well that he left 60,000
ducats.... In Spain he acquired many friends, being serviceable to the
great, to his equals and to those beneath him; lending and giving, and
being very liberal. He was so beloved by the gentlemen and grandees,
that no other foreigner had ever been held in such consideration. King
Ferdinand, the Catholic, when in Valladolid was wont to rise at an
early hour, and sometimes went to mass at the church of S. Francesco
next door to Andrea’s house. After hearing mass the King would ride on
his small mule into the entrance hall of the house and send for Andrea,
who came down with his nightcap on his head, his habit being to go to
his study and write for two or three hours, and then he would dress
and brush his hair. The King seeing him thus said: ‘Andrea, is it not
shameful that you, being a merchant and having to make money, should
only get up now?’ So he swore upon his life, and such like modes of
speech as they use in Spain, that he had been up for many hours, and
would tell the King all he had written and done. Often the King would
keep him talking thus in private for an hour or more, and when Andrea
went to the palace the King would leave whomsoever he was talking to
and come forward to meet him.” After describing various other members
of the family Paolo continues: “It now remains to say something of
myself; but as it is not fitting that one should speak well or ill
of oneself, I leave that to others. I will only mention that I began
to work in the Capponi’s shop when a small boy. Then, by my uncle’s
desire, I went to Lyons and was in the house of the Panciatichi, and
thence to Spain to join my said uncle. He kept me but a short time
with him, sending me to see after his business at Valencia, Saragossa
and Barcelona, and several times I went to the fairs in Castile. I was
three hundred miles away when he died, and as he left all his fortune
to the nephews of his sister, I found myself without money, save the
little that came to me by law from the said uncle’s patrimony.... I
repeat that I remained with little money and the loss of my youth,
for I was then thirty-five. So I bethought me that with what I had to
expect and any dower I might receive, I could live well, and decided to
take unto myself a wife. But it did not turn out as I thought, for my
gains were far less than I had calculated and my expenses much greater
than I had imagined, in addition to which I had to buy much furniture,
as I found but little of what had belonged to my father when I returned
from Spain.... I then reasoned with myself that it would be better to
do at once willingly what later I might be forced to do by want, and
earn something by my own work. Our Lord God opened for me a chance in
the bank of Federigo de’ Ricci, not, it is true, with a large salary,
but had I it not to-day I should be, I will not say poor, because that
I am with so many children, but in dire need. God be thanked for His
aid. To go back somewhat, I note that in January, 1547, I took for my
legitimate and beloved wife Francesca Guidetti, who has been good, and
is dearer to me than I can say. Easy tempered and an amusing companion,
she rules our family excellently well; and has always been, and is,
most affectionate to me, for these and other good qualities I love her
very deeply....” Paolo Velluti died in 1562, and the present Dukes of
San Clemente come from his younger brother Raffaello, one of whose
descendants took service in the Spanish army, and settled in Sicily. He
made a large fortune and married Maria Zati, after having bought the
estates of Grottaglia and Galluccio. When the Sicilian family of Zati
died out, all their possessions came to Francesco Velluti, who was born
at Galluccio in 1699. He was made Duke of San Clemente, Marquess of
Sta. Maria a Rifesi, etc., etc. His son returned to the old cradle of
his race, and bought from the Guadagni the fine palace in the Via Gino
Capponi. The present Duke is his grandson.