Part 6

The Capponi family is said to have come from Lucca about 1216, and gave no less than ten Gonfaloniers and fifty-six Priors to the city of their adoption, in whose history they played an important part. With Gino Capponi, born in 1364, began a series of remarkable men. Sent by the Republic of Florence in 1405 to take possession of the citadel of Pisa, and of her two outlying fortresses, he accomplished his task, and left a garrison of hired troops in the citadel. Soon after his departure the Pisans rose and retook the citadel, to the great dismay of the Florentines, who had paid a goodly sum to Visconti and his French ally for the possession of the prize they had long coveted. When Pisa appealed to Florence, as a sister Republic, to return the two fortresses, promising to make good all expenses, Gino remarks in his Commentary, “With these and like phrases they talked in such a disgusting manner that every man in Florence determined he would go naked rather than not conquer Pisa.”[25] In March the following year he and Maso degl’Albizzi were appointed Commissaries of the army before Pisa, and the famine-stricken city surrendered in October, when Gino Capponi was named governor. He died in 1451, leaving three sons; Agostino, from whom descend the branch of the Counts Capponi in Via de’ Bardi; Lorenzo, whose son of the same name established himself in trade at Lyons, and for his charity and munificence during the famine of 1573 was called the father of the poor; and the more famous Neri. He and Cosimo de’ Medici were the two most powerful men in Florence. “Neri was the wisest; the other, Cosimo, was the richest,” writes Cavalcanti. Riches proved to be of more avail, as Neri’s friend and fellow-soldier, Baldaccio d’Anghiari, was murdered, probably with the connivance of Cosimo; and his opposition some years later to the Florentine, or rather Medicean, policy in Lombardy was useless. His son Piero made a large fortune as a merchant when quite a young man, and though his family had always belonged to the popular party as opposed to the Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent entrusted him with many political missions. In 1494 he sent him as Commissary of the Republic to the camp of Alfonso of Aragon, who was fighting against the Pope and the Venetians; the Neapolitan army was in full retreat when the civilian Capponi placed himself at the head of the troops, rallied them, and led them to victory. The merchant and the diplomatist showed that he was a born leader, and when Piero de’ Medici was driven out of Florence, he was the man to whom her citizens turned. His proud answer to Charles VII. of France is a matter of history. The King, holding his ultimatum in his hand, declared that if it was not accepted he would order his trumpets to sound; whereupon Piero Capponi started forward, and seizing the paper tore it from top to bottom, exclaiming, “If you sound your trumpets we will ring our bells.” Those present were aghast, but Capponi knew Charles wanted money; moreover, Nardi tells us the French were alarmed, as some days before they had seen what a crowd of resolute, well-armed men, the ringing of a bell had brought forth. So the King turned off his threat with a bad joke on Capponi’s name. When Piero Capponi was killed at the head of his men during the siege of the little village of Sojana, Guicciardini says that many of the Florentines, whom he had served so well, openly rejoiced because he was regarded as the head of the party opposed to Savonarola.

His son Niccolò was chief of the _Ottimati_ party, and Baccio Valori advised the Cardinal Passerini, who governed the city for Clement VII., to arrest him, but he was afraid. After the flight of the Cardinal with his two wards, Ippolito and Alessandro de’ Medici, Niccolò Capponi made a long speech in the Great Council, but his prudent advice, a reconciliation with Clement VII. through the intervention of the Emperor Charles V., which implied the restoration of the Medici as citizens of paramount authority, but not as absolute rulers, was not taken. In 1527 he was elected Gonfalonier of Justice, and according to Varchi, the citizens were soon divided into several parties. The _Ottomati_, or richer nobility who followed Capponi, the _Popolani_, or popular party, some of whom were called _Adirati_, being decidedly adverse to Capponi, and the more violent section of the latter, the _Arrabiati_, who advocated the destruction, root and branch, of the Medici and of their adherents. Niccolò had a difficult part to play and his extraordinary proposal, after reciting nearly word for word a sermon of Savonarola’s in the Great Council, to proclaim Jesus Christ King of Florence was probably, as Varchi suggests, a move to gain the support of the _Frateschi_, a party of considerable consequence. In spite of many intrigues he was re-elected Gonfalonier of Justice the following year, “when it appearing to many, and with reason,” writes Varchi, “that the authority of the Ten was too great, and therefore dangerous, fifteen citizens of the greater and five of the lesser Guilds were added to the Great Council.” They were called the _Arroti alla Pratica de’ Dieci_, and sat for six months. Hearing that the Gonfalonier, through Jacopo Salviati, corresponded with the Pope, a law was enacted, in spite of his protestations that what he did was for the good of the Republic, that no one, for good or for evil, should communicate with the Pope. Capponi tendered his resignation, which was not accepted, and he secretly continued his correspondence with Rome, which nearly cost him his life. One day in the Council Chamber he dropped a letter from a friend of Salviati, which was found by a _Popolano_, a violent antagonist of his, and in a few hours the city was in an uproar. He was deposed and imprisoned, and Carducci, an _Arrabiato_ and his personal enemy, named in his stead. At the end of three days’ imprisonment Niccolò Capponi was brought before the magistrates, and Varchi describes how he entered the Council Chamber, “with a black cloak, and his hood thrown back on his shoulders for greater deference, showing on his usually placid countenance signs rather of anger than of fear.” His long speech to “the Magnificent Gonfalonier, the noble Signori, the most honoured magistrates and citizens, my judges,” is an able piece of special pleading, neither admitting nor denying his guilt. Varchi declares that the letter, which contained nothing of very great importance, was not lost by Capponi at all, but that Francesco Valori dropped it by order of the Pope, who was tired of Niccolò’s beating about the bush, and wanted to sow discord in the city, hoping once more to obtain the sovereignty for his family. Anyhow Capponi was acquitted and must have recovered some of his old popularity, as in the late autumn he formed part of a deputation to the Emperor at Genoa to try and soften his heart towards Florence. Charles was civil, but obdurate; Florence must be reconciled to the Pope, and open her gates to the Medici. On his way home Capponi met Michelangelo, who was going to study the fortifications of Ferrara, who told him what a desperate state Florence was in. Already ill and over-strained, Niccolò Capponi lay down and died, as the old chroniclers tell us, of grief and despair, in the small village of Castelnuovo, in the Garfagnana. His nephew Luigi was the husband of the beautiful Luisa Strozzi who was poisoned probably by the orders of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici.

Piero Capponi’s palace in Florence was on the Lung’Arno Guicciardini.

PALAZZO CAPPONI (DELLE ROVINATE)

_Via de’ Bardi. No. 28._

In former times the Arno flowed at the foot of this palace, but a large part of it was cut off to make the Lung’Arno Torrigiani in 1866. It was built for that wise and honest citizen Niccolò Da Uzzano by Lorenzo de’ Bicci, and some traces of the ancient architecture can be traced here and there in the interior. The Da Uzzano were men of note in the time of the Emperor Henry VII., and for the part they took in the defence of Florence were placed under the ban of the Empire. Niccolò Da Uzzano, born about 1359, was thrice Gonfalonier of Justice; as an ardent lover of liberty he opposed, but without success, the election of Giovanni de’ Medici to this office and while he lived held the balance of power between Rinaldo degl’Albizzi and Giovanni’s son, Cosimo the Elder. His famous speech to Niccolò Barbadori, given by Machiavelli in his _Storia di Firenze_, is that of a far-seeing statesman, and shows that the Florentines were right in saying that his death was a public calamity. His only daughter married a Capponi and the palace belongs to their descendant Count Luigi Capponi. The surname of “delle Rovinate,” or the ruined, by which this branch of the family is known, arose from the landslip nearly opposite the palace (see p. 68). The church of Sta. Lucia close by bears the same appellation.

PALAZZO CERCHI

_Via Condotta_

Before the building of the Palazzo de’ Signori in 1292 the Priors met in the Cerchi palace in Via del Garbo, now divided into many houses. Only vestiges of their towers, and of their once famous loggia, can still be traced at the corner of Via de’ Cerchi and Via de’ Cimatori. Piero Monaldi writes in his manuscript history of the ancient family of the Cerchi that they came from Acone, “of which place they were lords and also of Ripozzano. In Florence they owned towers, a loggia and sumptuous palaces, which were destroyed during the civil strife and discord. A noble race they were, rich and powerful in the city, with many retainers, munificent and lordly in the country side. But fate, enemy of their felicity, divided their house in the time of Pope Boniface VIII. Some became heads of the White party whilst others remained of the Black, so that they were undone and many of their records were lost wherein were mentioned numerous honourable lords. But the fame of Vieri de’ Cerchi remains, one of the greatest knights of his day and Prince of the White party. When called to Rome by Pope Boniface to try and pacify the said parties he went thither with many men at arms, all his own followers, which rather alarmed the Pope. There were also Niccolò Gentile and Borrigiano and all were knights of the Golden Spur.”[26] Vieri de’ Cerchi was the great antagonist of Corso Donati, head of the Black party, and “Florence,” writes Giovanni Villani, “was kept in such turmoil and danger by their enmity, that the city was often in an uproar, and every one was under arms.”

The palace came into the possession of the Bandini family, and it is said that the details of the Pazzi conspiracy were arranged here in the time of Bernardo Bandini [1478], and that his descendant Giovanni betrayed Florence to the Imperialists by signals from the top of the tower in 1530.

PALAZZO COCCHI

_Piazza Sta. Croce. No. 1._

The name of Cocco di Donato occurs among the inhabitants of the quarter of Sta. Croce in 1328, and his descendants, Borghini and Francesco Cocchi, having made a large fortune in trade decided to build themselves a fine house. From the friars of the abbey of Fiesole they bought a house on the Piazza Sta. Croce and erected the palace we now see, which came into the possession of Borghini’s nephews after his death in 1474. It has often been attributed to Baccio d’Agnolo, and Vasari names it amongst the fine palaces built in Florence after 1470, but does not mention the architect. Signor Iodico Del Badia believes that part of the original house bought from the friars was incorporated with the more modern building; particularly the pilasters up to the spring of the arches, and the jambs in Via de’ Cocchi.[27] These jambs are supposed by some to be portions of the ancient walls of Florence destroyed in 1078, placed by the Peruzzi at one end of the street which traversed the old Roman amphitheatre. Cinelli however declares that the Cocchi bought the palace from the Dei family, for whom it was built by Raffaello del Bianco on the site of other houses and of the ancient loggia de’ Risaliti.

In the XVIIth century it was enlarged by the addition of some small houses in the rear, and remained in the possession of the Cocchi until the last of the family, Maddalena, married Marchese Pucci. It now belongs to her grandson Count Agostino Della Seta of Pisa.

PALAZZO CORSI SALVIATI (NOW VISCONTI ARCONATI)

_Via Tornabuoni. No. 20._

The powerful and rich “consorteria,” or clan, of the Tornaquinci had their palaces, towers, loggie and shops, where now stands this palace. Their origin is lost in obscurity, but we know that the Emperor Otho I. allowed them to erect dams in the bed of the Arno near their houses. When the second circle of walls was built round Florence the gate, afterwards called S. Pancrazio, and a square, where now stands the Palazzo Strozzi, bore their name. Figliocaro Tornaquinci was Consul of the army in 1166 and in 1215, and his descendants fought at Montaperti on the side of the Guelphs in 1260. They divided into five different families in the XIVth century, of whom only the head of one branch, Simone, who took the name of Tornabuoni in 1393, interests us. His son Francesco was Commissary with the army of Carlo Malatesta and later was sent to Venice, to try and induce the Venetians to enter Lombardy against the Duke of Milan. A keen man of business, he stood high in favour with Cosimo de’ Medici and zealously worked to promote his return from exile in 1434. His daughter Lucrezia married Piero de’ Medici and their son, Lorenzo the Magnificent, owed much to her prudence and sagacity and inherited her poetic talent. Giovanni Tornabuoni, her brother, was treasurer to Sixtus IV. and head of the Medici bank at Rome, where his wife Francesca died in childbirth in September, 1477, and his letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici shows how deeply he mourned her. Vasari tells us that having caused a sepulchre to be made to her in the Minerva “he willed also that Domenico Ghirlandaio should paint the walls of the chapel wherein she was buried.”[28] Giovanni afterwards gave him the commission to paint the wonderful frescoes in the choir of Sta. Maria Novella, which we know from the diary of Luca Landucci were begun in 1486 and finished in 1490; not as Vasari states between 1481 and 1485.

Luca Landucci’s son Benedetto, who knew many of the people figured in the frescoes pointed them out in 1561, when he was eighty-nine years old, to Vincenzio Tornaquinci, who fortunately noted down his words.[29] Giovanni Tornabuoni is to the right of the great central window, kneeling bareheaded with his hands crossed over his breast, and opposite to him kneels his wife Francesca, her hands folded in prayer, with a white kerchief on her head. Signor E. Ridolfi exposes another of Vasari’s mistakes, which has often been blindly copied without verifying the dates.[30] Vasari states that “Ginevra de’ Benci, then a beautiful maiden” is one of the women in the fresco of the Visitation of Our Lady to S. Elizabeth. Ginevra was born in 1557, married to Luigi Niccolini in 1573 and died on the 17th August in the same year, so she could not have been painted by Ghirlandaio between 1486–1490. The beautiful maiden is Giovanni Tornabuoni’s daughter-in-law, the lovely and accomplished Giovanna degl’Albizzi, whose marriage to Lorenzo Tornabuoni was celebrated with such pomp in Florence in 1486. Two years later Niccolò Fiorentino made six medals of the Tornabuoni family. Two of Giovanni, one of his son Lorenzo, one of his daughter Lodovica, and two of his daughter-in-law Giovanna, and the latter indubitably represent the same person as the slender, swan-necked girl, in a splendid dress of gold brocade in Ghirlandaio’s fresco. She died, fortunately for her, before the plot to reinstate Piero de’ Medici was discovered. “On the 17th August, 1497,” writes Luca Landucci, “the _Pratica_ met, and were in the palace from morning until midnight; they were more than one hundred and eighty. And by vote it was determined that they [the accused] should die, and all they had be confiscated. Five were executed; first Bernardo del Nero, and then Niccolò Ridolfi, Giovanni Cambi, Gianozzo Pucci and Lorenzo Tornabuoni, and all the people grieved for them. Every one wondered that such a thing should be done and could scarcely believe it. They were executed that very night, and I shed many tears when I saw the youth Lorenzo on a bier passing Tornaquinci just before daybreak.”

From Niccolò Fiorentino’s medals Signor Ridolfi has been able to identify the young girl visiting S. Anne as Ludovica, Giovanni Tornabuoni’s daughter, who was then about thirteen. Like her sister-in-law she is clothed in gold brocade and has her hair dressed in the same fashion. It seems impossible that Ghirlandaio did not paint Lucrezia de’ Medici among the other members of the Tornabuoni family, the more so that he chose for the subject of his fresco the life of S. John the Baptist, which she had translated into _ottava rima_. She died, it is true, three years before he began the work, but there must have been portraits of her in existence, although none have come down to us. Even after the death of her husband Piero, Lucrezia exercised more authority than usually fell to the share of Tuscan women; both Poliziano and Pulci praise her poetic gifts and Niccolò Valori writes: “she was very eloquent, as can be seen in her translations into our tongue of parts of Holy Writ.” He adds: “Lorenzo was most deferential to her, and after his father’s death loved and honoured her; showing in all his actions not only the affection borne to a mother, but such respect as is given to a father; it was hard for any to discern whether he most loved or honoured her.” Her nephew Lorenzo Tornabuoni was decapitated, and his family exiled, in 1497, for plotting against the liberty of the Republic in favour of the Medici. A descendant of his, Niccolò, Bishop of Borgo S. Sepolcro and ambassador to France towards the end of the XVIth century, introduced the tobacco plant into Tuscany, which for some time was called “l’erba Tornabuoni” after him.

Lorenzo Ridolfi bought the Tornabuoni houses and incorporated them into one large palace in the beginning of the XVIth century, but when he rebelled and his son was decapitated in 1575, all his estates were confiscated and the palace became the property of the Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici. He sold it to the rich citizen Jacopo Corsi, a friend and protector of Peri, and here, in a theatre built on purpose, his opera _Dafne_, with words by Rinuccini was given for the first time.

The Corsi are said to have come from Dicomano and one of the family fought under the Ghibelline standard at Montaperti and was exiled in 1268. Their name first appears in the magistrature of Florence in 1354, when Bardo Corsi was the first of nine Gonfaloniers of Justice and two years later the first of twenty-eight Priors of the family. Giovanni, his descendant, was entrusted by Clement VII. with the care of Alessandro de’ Medici, and with him, Ippolito and the Cardinal Passerini, he left Florence in 1527. After the capitulation of the city he was elected Gonfalonier of Justice and showed great cruelty in sentencing his fellow-citizens who were anti-Medicean. His brother Bardo made an enormous fortune in trade at Naples, and in 1617 bought the feudal estate of Cajazzo, when Philip of Spain created him a Marquess with remainder to his nephews, the sons of Jacopo, who purchased the old Tornabuoni palace. His granddaughter Laura married the Marquess Salviati and the palace then took the name of Corsi Salviati. When in 1864 it was decided to widen Via Tornabuoni the façade was thrown back many feet and the pretty little loggia, built by Cigoli, was moved from the southern corner of the palace opposite Palazzo Strozzi to the northern. It now belongs to the Marchioness Visconti Arconati.

PALAZZO CORSINI

_Via Parione, No. 7; and Lung’Arno Corsini, No. 10._

The great palace of the Corsini family was built in the XVIIth century by Ciro Ferri and Pierfrancesco Silvani for the Marquess Filippo Corsini, where once stood the houses of the Compagni, the Segni and the Ardinghelli; the last had become the property of the Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici, and was sold after his death to pay his debts. The façade and chief entrance of the palace is in the Via Parione, but in the last century the terrace joining the two wings was erected in the Lung’Arno Corsini, with a large gateway into the courtyard, thus the palace now has two façades.

Neri, father of Bonacolto, from whose son Corsini the family took their name, came from Poggibonsi in the XIIIth century, writes the family historian Matteo. The ancient house in the Via Maggio, in which S. Andrea Corsini was born, is now a police station. Corsini’s son Neri was Consul of the _Arte della Lana_, or Guild of Wool, in 1270, twenty years later he was the first of fifty-six Priors of his family, and in 1295 Gonfalonier of Justice, an honour enjoyed by seven of his descendants. His nephew Tommaso, one of the greatest jurists of his day, expounded civil law as a young man at the University of Siena. He served the Florentine Republic in many embassies, and was successful in promoting treaties of peace with Siena, Perugia and Arezzo. Appointed to all the highest offices of his native city, he is mentioned by Villani as a most eloquent orator, whilst his reputation for honesty stood so high that Queen Joan of Naples named him her proxy for the sale of Prato to Florence. His last public act was in 1352, when Gonfalonier of Justice he made peace with the Visconti, and then retired to the monastery of S. Gaggio, of which he had been the principal founder. He died in 1366, leaving a large fortune to his sons. They erected in the adjoining church the fine monument by Orcagna to his memory, now in the Corsini chapel in S. Spirito.