Part 22

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.

PALAZZO SERRISTORI

_Via de’ Renai: No. 2._

Of the old Serristori palace but little remains as it was incorporated in the large new building in 1873. It was chiefly interesting because the arch-traitor Malatesta Baglioni, who sold Florence to Charles V. and Clement VII., had his head-quarters there during the siege of 1530.

A certain Ser Ristoro came from Figline in 1384 and became notary to the Signoria, and from him descend the family of Serristori who gave ten Gonfaloniers and twenty-seven Priors to Florence. They were staunch adherents of the Medici until the time of Alessandro, when Francesco and his sons Gugliemo and Niccolò were exiled as rebels. Niccolò joined Filippo Strozzi against Cosimo I., was taken prisoner at Montemurlo and imprisoned for life at Volterra.

The Senator Serristori was Minister for Foreign Affairs under the Grand Duke Ferdinando III. His son Luigi served for a time in the Russian army, and afterwards became Governor of Siena, and of Pisa in 1845, when the last Grand Duke of Tuscany revived in his favour the title of Count Palatine, bestowed on an ancestor of his in 1439 by the Emperor Paleologus. His son Alfredo went to Constantinople and acted as adjutant to Omer Pasha during the Crimean war. In 1858 he filled the same post to General Cialdini and assisted at the campaigns fought for the Unity of Italy. He died unmarried and was succeeded by the son of his sister, who took the name of Serristori.

PALAZZO SODERINI

_Piazza Soderini. No. 3._

From the Ponte alla Carraja to the Piazza di Cestello all the houses along the Lung’Arno once belonged to the Soderini, who came to Florence in the XIIth century. Ruggiero fought under the Guelph standard at Montaperti in 1260, and was the first of thirty-two Priors and his grandson the first of sixteen Gonfaloniers of Justice the family gave to Florence. Tommaso was twice Gonfalonier of Justice and as one of the leading men of the Guelph party was exiled after the Ciompi riots. The portrait by Donatello, of his son Francesco, the great enemy of Cosimo de’ Medici, is on the façade of Giotto’s campanile.

Niccolò, his nephew, was a great admirer and friend of S. Catherine of Siena. Whenever she came to Florence, she stayed in his house, and he bought and arranged for her a tiny house on the Costa di S. Giorgio as a place of retreat and meditation. He was so popular that when he was elected Gonfalonier Machiavelli tells us, “it was a marvellous thing to see what a concourse, not only of honourable citizens but of the people, accompanied him to the palace; and as he went a crown of olive was placed on his head to show that on him depended the welfare and the liberty of the country.” But he accomplished little during his term of office and his anti-Medicean policy proved his ruin. His brother Tommaso was on the contrary an intimate friend of Piero de’ Medici. He successfully negotiated the league between the Duke of Milan and the Republics of Venice and Florence, and when he went as ambassador to Rome, was knighted with great pomp by Paul II., who also bestowed on him the privilege of quartering the Papal Keys and the Triple Tiara in his arms. “Being one of the chief citizens,” writes Machiavelli, “and much superior to the others, his prudence and authority was recognized not only in Florence, but by all the princes of Italy. So that after the death of Piero many citizens came to visit him as the head of the city, and many princes wrote to him. But he, being prudent and knowing well his own fortune and that of their house, did not answer the letters of the princes, and gave the citizens to understand that they should not come to his house but go to that of the Medici.” He called a meeting of the chief citizens, to which Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici came, and after “a long and serious oration on the condition of the city and of Italy,” he concluded that the two young men must be continued in the position their forefathers had held. Machiavelli tells us that Lorenzo was governed very much by the advice of Messer Tommaso, in whose charge he left the city and the state when he went to Naples in 1479, Soderini being then the Gonfalonier. He died in 1484 leaving five sons, one of whom, Piero, was proclaimed Gonfalonier of Justice for life in 1502. He continued Savonarola’s constitution, but his want of decision caused his downfall. Giovanni Cambi in his quaint _Istorie_ tells us “that another Gonfalonier was elected on the 28th September, 1512, because Piero Soderini, out of fear of the principal citizens who would have no more of him and demanded back their privileges, left the palace with three youths who had gone there fully armed, saying that if he did not come with them quietly they would cut him to pieces. He begged them to spare his life and they granted his request. Unknown to the Signori, who were then sitting in council, he went with them, and many citizens accompanied him from the palace as far as the house of Francesco and Pagholo Vettori. When he arrived at their house near the Ponte a Sta. Trinita, behind the loggia of the Frescobaldi, he refused, in his great anguish and fear for his life, to go further, his own house being at the Ponte alla Carraja near S. Frediano.” _Virtù_, or strength of character, was the one quality admired in those days, and Piero being a simple, good-hearted and not very courageous man, has been branded for ever as a fool by the biting pen of the famous secretary:

“La notte che morì Pier Soderini, L’alma n’ando nell’inferno alla bocca; E Pluto le grido: Anima sciocca, Che inferno? va’ nel limbo de’ bambini,”

wrote Machiavelli with infinite scorn.

The Soderini palace, after passing through several hands, is now the property of Signor Schneiderff, and on the garden door is inscribed _Jus: ut pal: flor:_, words which have often puzzled passers-by. Passerini suggests that they were abbreviations of the motto engraved on Piero Soderini’s private seal ring, _Justus ut palma florebit_.

PALAZZO SPINI

_Via Tornabuoni. No. 2._

According to a genealogy drawn up by one of the Spini in the XVth century the family descend from Spina Moscardi, who lived in the XIIth century; and whose ancestor, a Roman soldier, settled in Florence at the time of the foundation of the city. His sons were Manetti and Ugo, both knights of the Golden Spur and wealthy merchants. Verini names the Spini among the great families of Florence.

“Qualis Spinorum fuerit fortuna secundos Vobis, quæ fuxta sunt alta palatia muros Testantur genus antiquum Romana propago.”

The houses and towers of both the brothers were partially destroyed by the Ghibellines in 1260–1266, and the remainder by the terrible flood of 15th December, 1288, when the Gianfigliazzi palace opposite was also swept away.

The present magnificent pile was erected about 1290 by Manetti’s son, Ruggieri, commonly called Geri, on the site of the old family palaces. Some say that Arnolfo di Lapo superintended the building, others that he only gave the design. Geri Spini, an able and very rich wool merchant, and the recognized head of the Guelph, or Black, party in Florence, must have been a remarkable and a many-sided man. Charles of Anjou named him his representative in Tuscany, he was Commissary of War for his native city, ambassador to Pope Boniface VIII. and afterwards to Benedict XI., when he rode into Rome at the head of 150 horsemen, all his own followers. On his return he was made Captain of Florence and a knight of the Golden Spur. King Robert of Naples created him Lieutenant-Governor of Arezzo and other cities, and in addition to all these multifarious duties he, together with the Mozzi, was banker to the Holy See, and he had to attend to his own business. He and his wife, Oretta Malespina, “a charming and virtuous lady,” are both immortalized by Boccaccio in the _Decamerone_. The story of the lady depends entirely on its charming and almost untranslatable language, but that of Messer Geri gives a vivid description of Florentine life and manners in the XIVth century.

[Illustration: PALAZZO SPINI.]

“I tell how Pope Boniface, with whom Messer Geri Spini stood in high honour, sent to Florence certain noble ambassadors on account of the great need he was in. They dismounted at the house of Messer Geri, and talking together of the Pope’s affairs it happened that Messer Geri and these ambassadors walked out nearly every morning, passing in front of Sta. Maria Ughi, where Cisti, the baker, had his oven and personally exercised his art. Although fortune had bestowed on him such a humble calling yet had she been very kind to him, inasmuch as he had become exceeding rich, and though he would not change his occupation, he lived splendidly; having, among other good things, the best red and white wine that were to be found in Florence or in the country round. Seeing that Messer Geri and the ambassadors of the Pope passed his door every day and the heat being great, he bethought him that it would be an act of courtesy to offer them some of his good white wine to drink. But having regard to his condition and to that of Messer Geri, it did not appear fitting that the invitation should come from him, so he cast about for a way of inducing Messer Geri to invite himself. Always dressed in a jacket of dazzling whiteness and an apron fresh from the laundry, so that he looked more like a miller than a baker, every morning he set in front of his door, at the hour when Messer Geri and the ambassadors were wont to pass, a new copper waterpot, well tinned, a new earthen vase of Bologna full of his good white wine and two tumblers, which seemed to be of silver, so bright were they. Then sitting down he would clear his throat once or twice, and as they passed begin to sip his wine with such manifest delight that a desire for it would have been raised in a dead man. Messer Geri saw this for one morning, and for two, and on the third he said: What is it, Cisti? Is it good? Cisti, rising quickly, replied: Messere, yes indeed, but how good I could never make you understand unless you taste it. Messer Geri, in whom either the weather, or more business than usual, or perchance the tasty sips of Cisti had caused thirst, turned to the ambassadors, and smiling, said: What say you, gentlemen, would it not be well if we taste the wine of this good man; most likely we shall have no cause to repent? And together they went towards Cisti. He placed a fine bench outside and begged them to be seated, and to their servants who pushed forward to wash the tumblers he said: Companions, stand back and leave me to do this work, for I know as well how to pour out wine as to make bread, and do not you think to have a drop. Saying this he washed four good new tumblers, had a fresh small earthen jar of his good white wine brought up, and carefully gave to drink to Messer Geri and his companions. The wine seemed to them the best they had tasted for a long, long time, and they praised it mightily, so while the ambassadors stayed they went nearly every morning together with Messer Geri to drink. When the time came for their departure Messer Geri gave a fine banquet, to which he invited many of the most honourable citizens, and he also invited Cisti, who would not go on any account. So Messer Geri ordered one of his servants to go for a flask of Cisti’s wine, and to serve half a glass of it to every guest during the first course. The servant, perchance angered because he had never been able to taste of the wine, took a large double flask, and when Cisti saw it he said: My son, Messer Geri has not sent you to me. The servant affirmed that he had, but not being able to obtain any other reply, returned to Messer Geri and told him. And Messer Geri said: Return, and tell him it is so, and if he answers thee in the same fashion, ask him to whom I send thee. The servant went and said: Of a surety, Cisti, Messer Geri sends me to thee. Cisti answered: And I am sure, my son, it is not so. Well then, replied the servant, to whom has he sent me? And Cisti said: To the Arno. And when the servant brought this reply to Messer Geri the eyes of his intellect opened and he said to the servant: Let me see what manner of flask thou hast taken. And when he saw it he said: Cisti was right, and scolded the man well and made him take a proper flask. When Cisti saw it he said: Now I know Messer Geri has sent thee, and he filled it joyfully. And on the same day he filled a small barrel with like wine and causing it to be carried with all due care to the house of Messer Geri went there and waited on him, saying: Messere, I would not that you should think that the large flask of this morning alarmed me. Only it seemed to me that you had forgotten what I said to you; that this is not everyday wine for a family, and so I desired to remind you this day. Now as I do not wish to act as your guardian, I have brought you all the wine to do with as you will. Messer Geri accepted Cisti’s gift with great joy and rendered him such thanks as were fitting, and ever after looked upon him as a friend.”