Part 6
“Lodovico and Dante quitted Florence on the 2nd day of March (1530) leaving the Piazza San Michele Berteldi in the following order—to recount everything in minute fashion. In front of them were two pages clothed in red and white, on horses whose caparisons were of white leather, and then two other pages mounted on great chargers and dressed in the like manner; followed by two trumpeters blowing continuously. After these came Captain Giovanni da Vinci, a youth of extraordinary stature, the second of Dante, and Pagolo Spinelli, a citizen and an old soldier of great experience, second of Lodovico, and Messer Vitello Vitelli, umpire of both.... Then followed the two champions on fine Turkish horses of marvellous beauty and value. They wore tunics of red satin with sleeves of the same slashed with lace, their breeches were of red satin laced with white and lined with cloth of silver; on their heads were skull-caps of red satin and hats of red silk with white plumes. Six servants dressed in the same fashion as the pages on horseback walked by the stirrups of the knights ... and in their wake were several captains and brave soldiers with many of the Florentine militia, who having eaten with them that morning bore them company as far as the gate.... They followed the Via di Piazza, by Borgo Santo Apostolo, down Parione, crossing the Carraja bridge to the San Friano gate where was their baggage; twenty-one mules laden with all and every sort of thing they might want in the way of food or arms for man and horse. Not to be beholden to the enemy for anything, they carried with them bread, wine, oats, straw, wood, meat of all kinds, every sort of bird and of fish and of pastry, tents fitted with every convenience and furniture they could need even to water. They took a priest, a doctor, a barber, a butler, a cook and a scullion with them. Going out of the gate with all this baggage they went along under the walls, until close to the gate of San Pier Gattolini [now Porta Romana] they turned to the right ... where was the last of the enemy’s trenches, and then proceeded to Baroncelli [Poggio Imperiale], the whole camp running to see them, it having been agreed that until they stood before the Prince of Orange no shot should be fired from any artillery, either large or small on either side, and this was faithfully observed.
“At twelve on the day of St Gregory, which fell on a Saturday, they fought in two stockades.[28] ... They fought in their shirts, that is breeches and no jackets, with the right sleeve cut off at the elbow, a sword and a short mailed glove on the sword hand and nothing on their heads.... Thus it was chosen by Giovanni to gainsay the opinion held of him in Florence, that he had more prudence than valour and behaved with more cunning than courage.
“Dante having caused his red beard which descended nearly to his waist to be shaved, attacked Bertino, and in the first round received a wound in his right arm and a slight touch on the mouth; he was then assailed with such fury by his adversary that without being able to shield himself he got three wounds on his left arm, one severe, and two slashes, so that if Bertino had continued to press him as he should have done, he was in such condition that he would have been forced to yield; being unable to hold his sword in only one hand he took it with both, and keenly watching the movements of his adversary saw how he rushed towards him with the utmost fury and inconsiderateness ... so advancing and extending both arms he drove his sword into Bertino’s mouth between the tongue and the uvula in such fashion that his right eye swelled forthwith; thus he who just before had boastingly promised to die a thousand times sooner than yield once, either vanquished by the extreme pain ... or else out of his senses, asked for quarter, to the very great displeasure of the Prince [of Orange] ... and died the following night at the sixth hour. Then Dante, to encourage his companion, shouted twice aloud ‘Victory, Victory,’ not being able, by reason of the laws agreed upon between them to otherwise help him.
“Lodovico at the first trumpet blast attacked Giovanni with incredible fury; but Giovanni, who was a master of fence and did not allow himself to be carried away by anger or any other passion, gave him a cut above the eyebrow, the blood from which began to impede his sight; therefore he with increased rage tried three times to seize his opponent’s sword with his left hand and wrest it from him, but Giovanni turning it quickly and drawing it hard towards him, always pulled it out of his hand and wounded him in three places in the said left hand; so that the more Lodovico tried to clear his eye from blood with his left hand in order to see light, the more he besmeared himself; nevertheless with his right hand he made a ferocious pass at Giovanni which passed more than a span beyond him, but did him no other harm than a slight scratch beneath the left breast. Then did Giovanni deal him a right-handed blow on the head, which he not being able to ward off in other fashion parried with his wounded left hand and tried once more to seize the sword. Failing in this and being severely wounded, he placed both hands to the hilt of his sword and resting it against his breast rushed at Giovanni to run him through; but the latter, agile as he was strong, sprang back, and at the same moment dealt him a blow on the head saying: ‘If thou wouldst not die yield thyself to me.’ Lodovico, unable to see and wounded in several places, answered: ‘I yield myself to the Marquis del Guasto,’[29] but Giovanni insisting he yielded unto him.”[30]
Lodovico Martelli died of his wounds twenty-four days after the duel, and it was solemnly decreed that his portrait should be placed in the Uffizi gallery among those of men famous for their patriotic virtues. Patriotism had, however, little to do with the duel, which was fought for love of Marietta Ricci, wife of Niccolò Benintendi.[31]
In 1565 Cosimo I gave the villa to his favourite daughter Isabella, married to Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, with faculty to leave it by will to her children; if she died intestate it was to revert to the crown. Eleven years later she was strangled one summer’s night by her husband at their villa Cerreti Guidi, and in the following October her brother, the Grand Duke Francesco I, confirmed his brother-in-law in the possession of Poggio Baroncelli.
In 1619 it became the property of the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife to Cosimo II. She bought it from Paolo Giordano Orsini, who was in want of money to pay the dower of his sister Camilla, engaged to Marcantonio Borghese, Prince of Sulmona. At the same time the Grand Duchess bought several farms to enlarge the grounds and make the broad carriage road leading up to the villa. She also planted the ilexes and cypresses which are now such a feature in the landscape. It became her favourite residence, and here Claudia de’ Medici, her sister-in-law, was married to Federigo Ubaldo della Rovere, eldest son to the Duke of Urbino, with less pomp than was usually displayed by the Medici owing to the recent death of the Grand Duke Cosimo II.
Maria Maddalena determined to enlarge and beautify her villa, and chose Giulio Parigi as her architect, changing its name from Poggio Baroncelli to Poggio Imperiale. She and Christine of Lorraine (mother, grandmother and guardians of the young Grand Duke Ferdinando II) entertained Prince Stanislao of Poland there in 1625 with the tragedy of St Ursula, a ball, and a ballet on horseback performed in an amphitheatre built for the purpose in front of the villa.
Ferdinando II married his cousin Vittoria, only child of Claudia de’ Medici and Federigo della Rovere, who died soon after the birth of his daughter. Brought up at Poggio Imperiale by her aunt Maria Maddalena, Vittoria bought the villa from her husband after his mother’s death for 62,500 scudi and spent large sums in enlarging and embellishing the place; several of the rooms added by her were frescoed by Volterrano (Baldassare Franceschini). When her half-brothers (by her mother’s second marriage with the Arch Duke Leopold of Austria) came to Florence she gave a magnificent entertainment there, including the favourite Florentine pastime of the _Buratto_ or Saracen. Loud laughter greeted the unhappy wight whose lance missed the proper spot on the breast of Buratto and was then knocked off his horse by the staff unerringly wielded by the wooden statue.
[Illustration: (Drawing of two women walking out of a stone gateway, with statues and trees in the background.)]
Violante of Bavaria, wife of Prince Ferdinando, son of Cosimo III, lived occasionally at Poggio Imperiale, and it was frequently visited by her brother-in-law Gastone, the last of the Medicean Grand Dukes, who inherited all the vices but none of the talent of his house. Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine, his successor, had a particular predilection for the imperial villa and spent 1,300,000 francs on enlarging it and building immense stables (now cavalry barracks). When he, on the death of his brother in 1790, became Emperor of Austria, his second son Ferdinando III succeeded to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and gave hospitality at Poggio Imperiale to the King of Sardinia and his wife, who had been compelled to quit Piedmont by the revolution. Charles Emanuel IV and Marie Clotilde arrived on the 19th January 1799, only to be driven out after a month of quiet and repose. They fled to Sardinia, and Napoleon having abolished Tuscany with a stroke of a pen, the Grand Duke took refuge with his brother in Vienna. A new kingdom—Etruria—was then created, with Lodovico of Bourbon, son of the Duke of Parma, as king. He died in 1803, leaving his young widow as regent for his little son, and Poggio Imperiale became her favourite residence. She added the rustic loggia and was beginning other improvements when Napoleon, unmoved by her tears and entreaties, swept Etruria off the map of nations and the poor Queen Regent and her small boy were driven into exile. A new mistress now ruled in the great villa—Napoleon’s sister, the brilliant Elise Bonaparte married to Captain Felice Baciocchi, who had been created Prince of Lucca and Piombino; and she gave balls and festivals to celebrate her brother’s victories in the villa which owed most of its splendour to Austrian princesses. Her grandeur was, however, short-lived; in 1814 she left Poggio Imperiale at dead of night, and Ferdinando III returned to Tuscany.
Three years later a royal company assembled in the “Villa of five hundred rooms,” as Poggio Imperiale was commonly called, to say farewell to the Arch Duchess Leopoldine of Austria who was to embark at Leghorn as the bride of the Crown Prince of Portugal and the Brazils. Her two sisters, one married to Prince Leopold of Naples the other to Napoleon, then a prisoner at St Helena, met her there together with the Princess of the Brazils who had come to receive her son’s future wife at the hands of Prince Metternich.
In the autumn of 1822, when Carlo Alberto, Prince of Carignano, that strange compound of hesitation and daring, religion and mysticism, came as an exile to Florence, his father-in-law Ferdinando III lent him Poggio Imperiale, and here his son Victor Emanuel, the future King of United Italy, narrowly escaped being burnt to death as a baby. His nurse, driven distracted by the mosquitoes tried to burn them on the mosquito-net and set fire to the bed. Snatching up the child she clasped him to her breast and saved his life at the sacrifice of her own. When the “Re Galant’ Uomo” entered Florence on the 15th April 1860, his first visit was to Poggio Imperiale to see the room he had inhabited as a child, and the apartments occupied by his parents.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Lodovico Martelli and Giovanni Bandini in one, Dante da Castiglione and Bertino Aldobrandini in the other.
[29] Colonel in command of the Spanish infantry.
[30] Varchi. _Storia Fiorentina._ Firenze, 1836–1841. Vol. II. p. 302.
[31] See Letter XVIII. Busini.
[Illustration: (Drawing of S shaped stairway leading from house to garden)]
VILLA DI LAPPEGGI
The hamlet of Lappeggi lies some six miles south-east of Florence in the picturesque valley of the Ema, and here the Ricasoli had a villa which in 1569 they sold to Francesco de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I. Francesco I was succeeded by his brother Ferdinando I, who, in order to avoid any controversy with Don Antonio de’ Medici, the supposed illegitimate son of the Grand Duke Francesco and Bianca Cappello,[32] gave him a life interest in a considerable share of the family property, Lappeggi among the rest. On the death of Don Antonio in 1604 the Grand Duke again came into possession and bestowed it on the Orsini family. Alessandro, last of the Orsini, died about thirty years later, and once more Lappeggi reverted to the crown when Don Mattias de’ Medici had it for his life, but seldom lived there, as he was governor of Siena. Finally the villa became the property of Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici, whose favourite place of residence it was.
[Illustration: VILLA DI LAPPEGGI.]
Antonio Ferri, the court architect, was then ordered to prepare designs for a villa, and choosing the most magnificent the Cardinal asked what the cost would be; after a few moments of reflection Ferri answered forty thousand scudi for solid good building. “And if I only desire to spend thirty thousand, and yet have my villa built according to this design, how long would it last?” said the Cardinal. On the architect replying that he would guarantee it for eighteen years, the Cardinal exclaimed, “Eighteen years? That is enough; that will serve my time.”
Lappeggi is celebrated in the _Rime Piacevole_ of Giovan Battista Fagiuoli, a poet who was one of the chief boon companions of the pleasure-loving Cardinal, and seems to have been consulted as to the planting of the grounds. He strongly recommended bay trees: “they are evergreen, but not funereal like cypresses, so noble that kings make crowns of their leaves; and above all they avert thunderbolts, which are frequent at Lappeggi. But,” he continues in his facetious poem, “plant what you will, everyone is sure to praise your work, for a Prince can do no wrong. Should he by chance commit some gross error, liars and courtiers will make it out a miracle; so that if you plant a pumpkin to-morrow they will all exclaim, ‘What a beautiful outlandish fruit.’ Or if you sow a bean—a common enough thing—you will hear, ‘What a glorious plant, what a show it makes, what taste the Cardinal has.’”
Francesco Maria de’ Medici was very fond of practical jokes. Once he saw an ass go pass the villa with her foal, and calling his French cook Monsù Niccolò and his two aids bade them buy the foal and serve it dressed in various ways at dinner. After the guests had eaten their fill, particularly of an excellent pasty, the bleeding legs and head of the little donkey with the hair on, were solemnly placed on the centre of the table. Some of the party had to leave the room, but most of them praised the good dinner and laughed, or pretended to laugh, at the Cardinal’s wonderful wit. Fagiuoli writes a long description of the scene in verse, saying that for his part, he preferred the long ears. He also describes the game of _pallone_, in high favour at Lappeggi, and various games of cards over which large sums of money were lost. Comedies written by him were learned and acted by the courtiers within six hours, in obedience to a master whose every whim had to be gratified at once. On the Cardinal’s birthday there was a fair on the sward near the villa; all Florence, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, flocked to see the fun and danced till late in the night. Marionettes, musicians, astrologers, conjurors “who,” says our satirical poet, “did not much astonish me, because the talent of changing cards by sleight of hand is by no means uncommon in these days.”
There were great doings at Lappeggi in 1709; Frederick IV, King of Denmark,[33] was in Florence, and the Cardinal de’ Medici begged him to honour his villa with his presence, and asked ten ladies of the aristocracy, chosen for their knowledge of French, to meet him. Prince Giovan Gastone waited betimes upon the King with all the court dignitaries to accompany him to his uncle’s villa where the ladies received His Majesty at the door with much reverence and courtesying, and at dinner they and Prince Giovan Gastone sat at the King’s table and were served by the pages of the court; the Cardinal having a bad fit of the gout being unable to do the honours himself. The dinner consisted of four complete changes: one cloth after another was removed and towards the end came a course of sweet dishes of various kinds; after these had been tasted, sugar-plums disposed in pyramids and many kinds of liqueur were placed on the table. In front of the King was put a large coffee-pot in the shape of a fountain with four jets, and at the sides of the table were four golden dishes, two containing three cups of chocolate each, the others cups of water. Between the golden dishes the space was covered with Savoy and other biscuits, and when the coffee-pot was removed, “trionfi” of bottles of San Lorenzo and other rare wines took its place, and all the glasses used were of the finest engraved Bohemian glass. During dinner there was a concert, and the same musicians followed the King about during the whole day, and managed so well as to be ready to receive him with dulcet tunes at every halting-place. After the banquet the King withdrew with the ladies and cavaliers into another room and played games until four o’clock, when they drove about the grounds and visited the home farm. Then going into the orange garden they found a sumptuous cold repast, preparations of milk, capons in jelly, iced fruit and sweetmeats of divers kinds. The iced fruit, a dish new to the King and to all his people, delighted them so much that His Majesty asked permission to make a present of a dish to his dwarf, who was of noble birth and a great favourite and trusted counsellor. On a table apart stood small flasks of the most costly Tuscan wines, chiefly those made on the surrounding hills praised so highly by Redi in his _Bacco in Toscana_. The King and all the company sat down and ate heartily of the good things, and then, to crown so royal a day, it was proposed to dance; the King set the example, but as night was approaching and dew began to fall it was considered prudent to retreat indoors. More liberty and jollity being permitted in the country than in town, French dances were abandoned and peasant dances, such as the _Spalmata_, the _Mestola_ and the _Scarpettaccia_ were indulged in, to the great satisfaction and delight of His Majesty. Thus they amused themselves until three in the morning, when all returned to Florence.”[34]
In July of the same year the Cardinal was, for family reasons, induced to obtain dispensation from Holy Orders and marry the Princess Eleonora Gonzaga of Guastalla, twenty-five years his junior, and the bachelor amusements at Lappeggi came to an end. The young Princess openly manifested her dislike and contempt for her worn-out, gouty and corpulent husband, and he, they say, took this so much to heart that he died after only eight months of married life.
Lappeggi was then abandoned and shut up for four years when Cosimo III lent it to Princess Violante of Bavaria, widow of his eldest son. She loved the society of literary men and poets and had a particular admiration for _improvisatori_. Cavaliere Bernadino of Siena, famous for his talent in improvising, often visited her at Lappeggi, where he met the burlesque poet Ghivizzani, and a peasant girl who lived near by called Domenica Maria Mazzetti, surnamed la Menica di Legnaja, who had a great reputation for improvising in “terza rima.” So delighted was Princess Violante with the girl’s talent that she had her taught reading, writing, Latin and music, all which she learnt with ease. After the death of Cosimo, Princess Violante had to give up Lappeggi and went to live in Rome; she took the peasant girl with her and caused her to be crowned with bays on the Campidoglio.
In 1816 Lappeggi was sold by public auction to Signor Capacci; he soon resold it to Captain Cambiagi, who was obliged to take down the second story, which was causing the walls to bulge and threatened to destroy the whole house, and at his death the Gheradesca family bought it and turned the royal villa into a lodging-house for poor people. In 1876 it came into the possession of the well-known sculptor Giovanni Dupré, whose daughter, also a sculptress, still owns it. In May 1895 the villa, like so many in the neighbourhood of Florence, suffered severely from an earthquake; but time, neglect and earthquakes have been unable to quite destroy the beauty of the place, and as we stand on the wide broad terrace in front of the villa looking out across the valley of the Chianti towards Siena, the talent of Antonio Ferri the architect is realised, who so happily placed the villa of Lappeggi and its gardens in sight of so fine a scene. The lines of the balustrade, projecting above the garden in a bold half circle, are seen against the hills where they slope down towards the valley, thus forming a scene as austerely beautiful as a drawing by some great Tuscan Master. A wide staircase leads swiftly down on either side of the terrace to the lower level of the garden, which is raised above the vineyards by strong bastions and confined by a low rampart wall. The outline of the beds remain as in Zocchi’s print, but where the pleasure-loving Cardinal once walked with a gay company of Florentines among the brightness of his flowers now are seen only artichokes and potatoes, and the statues and vases are no longer standing to recall the pageantry of those days. At the top of the garden a big grotto has been scooped out beneath the upper terrace, which Francesco Maria, no doubt remembering for a brief moment his title of Cardinal, caused to be ornamented with terra-cotta bas-reliefs illustrating such scenes as Moses before the burning bush, while a huge statue of St Mark with his lion seated above a pool of water, might easily be mistaken by a casual observer for a Neptune rising from the sea with his dolphin.