Part 3

Strictly speaking Cafaggiuolo, situated some eighteen miles from Florence, can hardly be called a Florentine villa; but it is too intimately connected with the history of the Tuscan city and of the Medici not to be mentioned together with Careggi, Poggio a Cajano and other well-known villas.[9]

[Illustration: CAFAGGIUOLO.]

The carriage road to Bologna climbs boldly up the hills behind Fiesole, so swiftly that the hills which towered so high above us but a while ago, now, as we look back upon them, seem to mingle with the plain; and we plunge into the Mugello, where the olive is no longer seen. As San Pier a Sieve is neared, memories intermingle of Florentine painters and Florentine tyrants, and the land itself seems strangely divided between the sense of absolute peace and of preparations for defence against neighbouring foes. Vespignano, the birthplace of Giotto, lies at no great distance, and further again the small fortified village of Vicchio where Beato Angelico passed his earliest years. Above the Sieve, which flows so quietly and evenly through the valley towards the Arno, its pure green waters receiving a delicate shade from the tall poplar trees on its low banks, rise low rounded hills covered with oaks, while here and there a pine wood shows dark and unvaried through spring and winter months. The tower of Trebbio, rising on its hill like a castle keep, is seen in strong relief against the sky for many miles round, and tells of past centuries of insecurity and warfare. Opposite is the fortress of San Martino, now dismantled, built to guard the road to Florence through the Mugello, and far and near can be descried small watch-towers on the hill-tops; but vain seem these preparations made by nobles and princes against their foes when we look at the long line of the Apennines, scarred, rugged and woodless, stretched at right angles across the valley.

Vasari tells us that Michelozzo Michelozzi designed for Cosimo the Elder “the palace of Cafaggiuolo in the Mugello in the guise of a fortress amid the woods, the copses and other matters appertaining to fine and famous villas, and two miles distant from the said palace he finished the Capuchin monastery, which is a very splendid thing.”[10]

Dr G. Brocchi, a contemporary of Zocchi, wrote a history of the Mugello in 1747, and describes Cafaggiuolo as being “built after the fashion of an ancient fortress with sundry towers, and moats round it and drawbridges. Inside is a large chapel dedicated to the saints Cosimo and Damiano, protectors of the royal house of Medici. There are likewise many halls and great rooms, with various courtyards, loggie and galleries, which make it (though according to ancient fashion) very noble and magnificent.” Very noble the old place still is though the real entrance under the tower is now abolished, and the late Princess Borghese, who bought Cafaggiuolo in 1864, made an arch in the front wall which spoils the façade. Moats and drawbridges have disappeared, and the grass grows right up to the walls. Cafaggiuolo is typical of the practical style of Michelozzi, who adopted classical forms rather because of their simplicity and convenience than because he shared Brunelleschi’s æsthetic enthusiasm. Cosimo probably ordered his favourite architect to build a castle to serve as a stronghold in case of any popular rising, rather than a villa, but the lines dictated by this utilitarian end are treated with great skill and produce a sense of dignity and grandeur. It is in fact a mediæval castle adapted to the new taste for classical architecture by the use of classical mouldings in doors and windows, but without any essential reconstruction of the mediæval plan of building. Cosimo Pater Patriae spent what time he could spare from the cares of government between his two favourite villas Careggi and Cafaggiuolo; he preferred the latter to his other possessions because all the country he saw from the windows belonged to him, and whenever the plague broke out in Florence he took refuge in the pure air of the Mugello. “You may know,” wrote one of his friends, “when Florence is menaced; for if Cosimo and his family go to Cafaggiuolo you may be sure that eight or ten people die _per diem_ in the town, but should they leave it the plague is indeed severe.”

Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici passed much of their childhood at Cafaggiuolo; they were sent there when their grandfather Cosimo the Elder lay dying and the plague was ravaging Florence. The two boys wrote thence to their father: “Magnifice Pater, we arrived here yesterday morning in safety; at Tagliaferro we had a little rain, but all the rest of the journey could not have been pleasanter. On arrival we ordered that the family of Messer Zanobi should go on to Gagliano, and we made them understand that if any of them went to Florence or any other infected places they could not return. As to Pulci, who had been waiting two days in order to be with us, we cleverly sent him back to Chavallina,[11] and in all things till now we have observed your commands. Thus shall we continue to do. We commend ourselves to you and to Mona[12] Lucrezia. Your sons Laurentius et Giulianus de’ Medicis.”

In the Medicean archives are many letters from the factor of Cafaggiuolo to Piero de’ Medici giving him news of his children and their grandmother. In April 1467 he reports: “Yesterday we went out fishing and they caught enough for their dinner and returned home at a reasonable hour; to-morrow, if they will, we go out riding after dinner and begin to show them the estate as you ordered.” Again in August the following year he writes: “Madonna Contessina and the boys are well, may God preserve them. Lorenzo wants to smooth the ground in front of Cafaggiuolo. Here we stand in need of wax and tallow candles. I told Madonna Contessina, and she said I was to take white Venetian ones; but they appear to me too honourable for Cafaggiuolo. If it seems so to you also tell Madonna Lucrezia to send us others, and at all events let tallow ones be sent for common use. Yestermorn Madonna Contessina, Lorenzo and Giuliano with the household went on horseback to the Friars of the Wood and heard High Mass. Madonna rode Lorenzo’s mule, and was astonished to find herself more agile than she had expected. As it seems to please her we shall go to Comugnole and about in the plain to have a little amusement, but always with two footmen at her stirrup, and we shall do what we can to save her all fatigue and trouble in the management of the house. The boys are having a happy time and go bird-catching and shooting and return at a reasonable hour; they enliven her and the neighbourhood.”

Cafaggiuolo always brings Donatello to one’s memory, as Piero de’ Medici, in obedience to the wishes of his father Cosimo, made him a present of a house and farm belonging to the estate. The great sculptor was delighted at thus becoming a landed proprietor, but after a year’s experience of farming begged Piero to take back his gift. Life, he said, was too short to be spent in listening to the incessant complaints of an ignorant and tedious peasant, whose roof was always being carried off by the wind, his crops damaged by hail, or his cattle seized for arrears of taxes. Piero laughed heartily at Donatello’s inability to cope with the astute Mugello peasant and exchanged the farm for a pension.

Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici often returned to Cafaggiuolo as young men, and with their friends the Pulci frequented the fairs and weekly markets of the Mugello. At one of these, Lorenzo met the heroine of that delightful country idyll _Nencia da Barberino_, “a masterpiece of true genius and humour. It can scarcely be called a parody of village life and feeling, although we cannot fail to see that the town is laughing at the country all through the exuberant stanzas, so rich in fancy, so incomparably vivid in description.”[13] Luigi Pulci imitated it in _La Istoria della Beca da Dicomano_, while his brother Luca in the _Driadeo d’Amore_ praises the rivers Sieve, Lora, Sturo and Tavaiano, and under feigned names describes the places where Lorenzo and Giuliano and the three brothers Pulci went hawking and fishing.

After the Pazzi conspiracy and the murder of Giuliano in 1476, Lorenzo sent his wife Clarice with the children and their tutor Angelo Poliziano to Cafaggiuolo for safety. Poliziano wrote to Lucrezia, who had remained in Florence with her son: “Magnifica Domina mea. The news I can send from here is that we are all well, that we have so much and such continual rain that we cannot quit the house, and that we have exchanged hunting for playing at ball, so that the children may not want for exercise.... I remain in the house by the fireside in my slippers and greatcoat, and you would take me for melancholy in person could you see me; but perhaps I am but myself after all, for I neither do nor see nor hear anything that amuses me, so much have I taken to heart our calamities; sleeping and waking they haunt me. Two days since we began to spread our wings as we heard the plague had ceased, now we are again depressed on learning that things are not yet quite settled with you. When at Florence we have some consolation—if nought else that of seeing Lorenzo return home safe. Here we are always anxious about everything; and as for myself, I declare to you I am drowned in weary laziness for the solitude in which I find myself. I say solitude, because Monsignore [probably the Bishop of Arezzo] shuts himself up in his room, where I find him sorrowful and full of thought, so that being with him increases my own melancholy; Ser Alberto del Malherba mumbles offices all day long with the children; I remain alone, and when tired of studying ring the changes on plague and war, on sorrow for the past and fear for the future, and have no one with whom to air these my phantasies. I do not find my Madonna Lucrezia here to whom I can unbosom myself and I am dying of weariness.... I commend myself unto you. Ex Cafasolo, die 18 dicembris 1478. Your servant Angelus.”

Poliziano was no favourite with the proud and unlettered Clarice, and he complained to Lorenzo about Giovanni (afterwards Pope Leo X): “His mother sets him to read the Psalter, of which I do not approve. When she does not interfere with him he makes most wonderful progress.” It ended by Clarice sending away Poliziano and engaging a priest to superintend her son’s studies. Before his birth she dreamed that she was delivered of a huge but docile lion, and his father always destined him for the Church. Soon after he was seven he received the tonsure and was declared capable of ecclesiastical preferment; whereupon the King of France made him abbot of Fonte-dolce, an appointment rapidly followed by so many others that, after enumerating them all, old Fabroni in his life of Leo X exclaims: “Bone Deus, quot in uno juvene cumulata sacerdotia.”

In April 1533, the stern old villa echoed to the laughter of a bevy of young girls who went with Caterina de’ Medici, the only daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino,[14] then only fourteen years of age, to receive Margaret of Austria, the illegitimate daughter of Charles V. The poor child was but nine when she arrived in Tuscany as the affianced bride of Alessandro, Duke of Florence, whose mother was a negress, or some say a peasant woman from Collevecchio, the wife of a groom in the service of the Duke of Urbino. He was supposed to be the son either of Lorenzo himself or of the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (afterwards Clemente VII); and the interest taken in him by Pope Clemente, who warmly supported his election as Duke of Florence, rather points to the latter supposition. He is inscribed in the family tree as “of uncertain parentage.” Alessandro’s cruelty and licentiousness are matters of history; he left his mother to suffer dire poverty, and she is said to have died of poison administered by his orders, so that his murder by Lorenzino de’ Medici delivered the poor little Princess from a brutal husband. Lorenzino fled to Cafaggiuolo after murdering his cousin, and waited to know how the news was received in Florence. When he heard that messengers had arrived at Trebbio, another Medicean villa close to Cafaggiuolo, where Maria Salviati, widow of Giovanni de’ Medici (delle Bande Nere), and her son Cosimo lived, he left in hot haste for Venice. “It only needed that someone should begin a tumult,” writes Varchi, “when Signor Cosimo, who had been secretly warned by friends and summoned by many citizens, arrived in Florence with a small company; he being the son of Signor Giovanni, and of comely aspect, and having always shown himself of a pacific and kindly nature, it cannot be said, described, or imagined with what delight he was looked on by the people or how ardently they desired and hoped to see him Prince.”

His father’s memory probably preserved his life a few years before, for Varchi tells us, “Signor Otto da Montauto was taken up for killing Bernardo Arrighi at Prato and condemned to lose his head, but the punishment was commuted to a fine of 1000 ducats and a year’s imprisonment. But it is supposed that these rigorous measures were not taken against Signor Otto for the murder committed, but because on his return from succouring Lastra when sent on a secret mission to Trebbio to fetch Madonna Maria de’ Medici and Cosimino her son, he failed to do so; some say that having asked a peasant who was coming down from Trebbio: ‘Who is up there and what are they doing?’ The man, being intelligent and quick-witted, understood what manner of man he was, and answered with intent to frighten him: ‘Up there are the Lady Maria and the Lord Cosimo with many soldiers and all the peasants of the country round, and they are making good cheer and keep watch day and night.’ So Signor Otto would not tempt fortune. Others say he did not go because, not only do good soldiers dislike doing the work of policemen, but having begun life under the Lord Giovanni and gained his spurs with him, like all who had fought under the Lord Giovanni he worshipped his memory in a way not to be believed, and therefore was attached to his wife and his son.”

The “kindly nature” of Cosimo was only skin-deep if all the tales told of him are true, and his youngest son Don Pietro de’ Medici was distinguished for immorality. Married against his will to Eleonora, daughter of his mother’s brother Don Garcia di Toledo, he systematically neglected the young and lovely Spaniard, described as “beautiful, elegant, gracious, kindly, charming and affable; and above all with two eyes rivalling the stars in brilliancy.”[15] Evil tongues whispered that the Grand Duke’s admiration for his wife’s niece was the principal motive for her marriage with Don Pietro which ended so tragically at Cafaggiuolo. After the death of Cosimo I the name of Alessandro Gaci, a handsome youth from Castiglion Florentino, was coupled with that of Donna Eleonora, but the threats of the Grand Duke Francesco forced him to leave Florence and enter a Capuchin monastery. His successor was a Florentine, Bernardino Antinori, whose passionate admiration for the lovely princess soon became known. The lovers were imprudent; a letter fell into the hands of the Grand Duke, whose scandalous ill-treatment of his wife Joan of Austria and subserviency to every whim of the dissolute Venetian, Bianca Cappello, were the talk of Florence. He asserted that the honour of his family demanded an example and ordered Antinori to be taken to the Bargello and strangled, and his sister-in-law to be sent to rejoin her husband at Cafaggiuolo. Bidding a tearful farewell to her little son, Eleonora left Florence on the morning of the 11th July 1576 and reached the stern old villa at nightfall, where Don Pietro received her with unwonted demonstrations of affection and at supper was very merry. He insisted on accompanying her to her room, and before she could summon her women threw her on to the bed and plunged his dagger several times into her breast. She died in a few minutes imploring God to show her more mercy than she had received at the hands of men, and kneeling by the lifeless body, Don Pietro prayed to his patron saints for forgiveness and vowed he would never marry again—a vow he did not keep. Then he sat down and wrote a few lines to his brother the Grand Duke announcing the sudden death of Donna Eleonora.

The doctor’s certificate that Donna Eleonora de’ Medici had died of failure of the heart, was received in Florence with the incredulity vouchsafed to most of the sudden deaths in the Medici family. Francesco I pretended to believe it when he wrote to his brother, Cardinal Ferdinando, at Rome: “Yesternight at the fifth hour Donna Eleonora, being in bed, had so violent a stroke that she was suffocated before Don Pietro or others could apply any remedies; this has sore disturbed me, and will, I know, afflict Your Eminence. But as whatever comes from the hand of God must be borne with patience, I pray you may accept quietly the will of the Divine Majesty. This night the body will be brought from Cafaggiuolo for proper interment, of which I hereby desire to give you notice, taking advantage of the courier who has come from Spain.”

But the Grand Duke told the real story in a letter dated 16 of July, and sent to the Florentine ambassador at Madrid with orders to read it to the King of Spain. “Although in a former letter it was stated that Donna Eleonora died of failure of the heart, you are, nevertheless, to inform His Catholic Majesty that the Lord Don Pietro, our brother, took her life with his own hands for her betrayal of him in ways unbecoming a lady of high birth. This he had communicated to Don Pedro her brother, through a secretary, begging him to come here; not only did he refuse to come, but he prevented the secretary from having speech with Don Garcia (Donna Eleonora’s father). We desire that H.M. should know the truth, being determined H.M. shall be informed of all the doings of Our house, and especially of this; for if We did not lift the veil from H.M.’s eyes, it would seem to Us not to serve H.M. well and honourably. All facts shall be sent on the first opportunity so that H.M. may know with what good reason the Lord Don Pietro thus acted.”

Settimanni accuses Don Pietro of the further crime of poisoning his little son who was odious to him on account of his likeness to his mother. He also records that when, thirty-eight years after death, Donna Eleonora’s body was moved from one vault to another in San Lorenzo it was found to be perfectly preserved, and the beautiful young princess (she was but twenty-one when so foully murdered) lay as though asleep, clothed all in white with her hands crossed over the wounds in her breast.[16] Murders and sudden deaths were too common in the Medici family to deter the Grand Duke Francesco I from taking his second wife Bianca Cappello to Cafaggiuolo in 1585 with a great following of courtiers. Hearing that their favourite painter Sandrino Bronzino was painting an altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria a Olmi near Borgo San Lorenzo, they mounted their horses and went to pay a visit to the prior, Don Quintilio Rinieri. He was an old acquaintance of Bianca’s, and entreated them to do him the honour of dining with him. Don Quintilio had a fine taste in wine and some reputation as a sayer of good things, he was moreover a courtier, and before dinner was over he obtained the consent of the Grand Duchess Bianca to allow Bronzino to paint her portrait on the wall of his room. In 1871 the fresco was transferred to canvas and placed in the Uffizzi gallery. Bianca, who was then thirty-seven, sits resplendent in crimson velvet, and this, Signor Baccini thinks, is probably the only authentic portrait that exists of the “daughter of Venice.”[17]

When Cardinal Ferdinando succeeded his brother Francesco as Grand Duke, he used to spend the autumn months at Cafaggiuolo, where he could enjoy complete liberty and indulge in his passion for the chase. From an unpublished diary in three large volumes by Cesare Tinghi, one of his secretaries, and found in the National Library by Signor Baccini, we learn that Ferdinando I was very strict as to preserving his game, and punished poachers severely. He rose early and went out shooting or fishing with his gentlemen, and in the afternoon gave audiences to princes and ambassadors who were received with great magnificence. Often the peasants would be summoned to dance for the amusement of the Grand Duchess Christine and her children, and sent home rejoicing with presents of ribbons, scarves and nick-nacks; or the soldiers from San Martino, the fortress begun by Cosimo I, and finished by Ferdinando, which guarded the entrance to the Mugello, would execute military games and sham battles.

Cafaggiuolo was not much frequented by the Medici after the time of Ferdinando I, and only occasional references to it are found in the archives. The family of Lorraine preferred the villas nearer Florence, though they sometimes passed a night there on their way to Austria, but when Ferdinando III returned to Tuscany in 1814 after the fall of Napoleon, the Florentine nobility rode out to Cafaggiuolo to meet him and the whole of the Mugello was illuminated in his honour.