The victim, when thy peace departed, fell.”
Par. Canto xvi., Cary’s trans.
“This day witnessed the beginning of the destruction of Florence,” writes an old chronicler. The beautiful young bride, seated on the funeral car with her dead husband’s head in her lap, went through the streets calling for vengeance on his murderers. The city was divided into two factions and Guelphs and Ghibellines flew at each other’s throats. After some years of incessant strife another marriage was arranged. This time it was the daughter of a Buondelmonti who wedded an Uberti. But at a banquet in the same old castle of the Mazzinghi at Campi, a quarrel arose in which Schiatta degl’Uberti was killed, while Oddo Fifanti had his nose cut off and his mouth slit from ear to ear. Neri degl’Uberti thereupon sent back his wife to her father saying he would not beget children from the daughter of a race of traitors.
The Buondelmonti were all handsome, which probably accounts for the love stories connected with their name. Not many years passed ere all Florence was keenly interested in the fate of Ippolito Buondelmonti, the hero of a manuscript Latin tale and of a ballad printed in the XVIth century. In the Osservatore Fiorentino the story is told as follows. “Ippolito Buondelmonti, one of the handsomest and most polite youths of Florence, saw the young daughter of Amerigo de’ Bardi at the feast of S. Giovanni, and was seized with such love for the maiden that her grace and beauty were ever present to him. When he heard who she was, in despite of the bitter hatred between the two houses, he studied in what way he could please her, passing often under her windows and following her when she went out. Then reflecting on the great difficulties arising from the enmity of their parents, he was the most sorrowful man in the world. At length consumed by continual grief he became so ill that he lay in bed and no doctor could discover his malady. His mother, who loved him tenderly, implored him to say what was the cause of his thus wasting away, and after long resistance he confessed his love for Dianora de’ Bardi. She, who cared for nought save to restore her son to life, went to an old friend, Madonna Contessina, a cousin of the Bardi, who lived in a villa at Montecelli half a mile from the city, and entreated her so earnestly that at last Contessina promised to help her.
“It being September a solemn feast was to be celebrated in that district, and Dianora was invited with many other girls, her friends and relations. After a joyous midday meal the girls went to repose in various rooms, and Dianora was led into one where Ippolito had been hid since the day before. The maiden was much alarmed but he, with submissive and gentle manner, said he would rather die than cause her any fear, and offered her his dagger to pierce his heart. The end was that she promised to accept him as her lord on the condition that everything was to be kept secret from her parents. It was arranged between them that the next night she would let down a cord from her window to which he was to attach a silken ladder, and so they parted. At midnight Ippolito stole cautiously across the Ponte Vecchio with the ladder hid in his cap, but as he reached Amerigo’s palace in Via de’ Bardi, the Bargello, or head of the police, with his guard, came down the street from S. Niccolò. Ippolito fled up the Costa, losing his cap as he ran. As ill-luck would have it another patrol was coming down from the Porta S. Giorgio and he was seized and taken to the Palazzo del Podestà. To shield Dianora he declared that he had intended first to rob and then set fire to the palace of the enemy of his house. The Podestà refused to believe him and sent for his father, before whom he repeated his words, and the next morning the banner of Justice on the old palace and the tolling of the great bell, announced that a culprit had been condemned to death. Ippolito obtained as a last favour to be led to execution past the palace of the Bardi, whose pardon he declared he wished to ask, but really in hopes of gazing once more on the face of his love. Dianora saw him from her window, and casting aside all maidenly modesty rushed down into the street exclaiming: “He is my affianced husband and only risked his life out of his great love for me.” The procession was stopped and word was sent to the Podestà, who stayed the execution and summoned the lovers and their families before him. There Dianora pleaded for the life of her lover and for her own love so successfully, that not only was the marriage allowed, but the Bardi and the Buondelmonti swore friendship. The whole city rejoiced and Ippolito and Dianora lived most happily for many years and were the parents of many children.”
In June 1378, when the Arti, or Guilds, rose against the nobles, and to the cry of Viva il Popolo sacked and burnt many of the old towers and palaces, those of the Buondelmonti, which extended from the Piazza Sta. Trinita some way down the Borgo S.S. Apostoli, were destroyed. The façade of the present palace, which must have been far more imposing before the great loggia at the top was bricked up and divided into many rooms, was frescoed by Jacone early in the XVIth century, with subjects from the life of Pippo Spano,[22] but all traces of his work have perished. The name of Buondelmonti occurs frequently in the annals of Florence among her soldiers and her ambassadors, while Esau, son of Manente who married a sister of the Grand Seneschal Acciaiuoli (see p. 2) and followed his brother-in-law to Naples where he was made Lord High Chamberlain, attained the dignity of King of Rumenia and Despot of Arta, but died childless.
Zanobi Buondelmonti was implicated in the plot to assassinate the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, and on hearing of the arrest of Alamanni, one of the conspirators, he hurried home to conceal himself in one of those secret hiding places which existed in all large houses. But his wife, with courage “more worthy of a man than of a woman,” writes Nardi, drove him almost by force out of the house, gave him all the money she could gather together, and told him to make haste and cross the frontier. As he left the city he met the Cardinal returning from his afternoon drive, and barely escaped being seen by dashing into the shop of a sculptor. He reached the frontier in safety and went to his friend Ludovico Ariosto, then Podestà of Castelnuovo in the Ferrara territory, who had always been Buondelmonti’s guest when he came to Florence. Varchi says that he was also an intimate friend of Machiavelli “whose virtues he acquired without being tainted by any of his vices.” He was eventually pardoned, and died with his whole family of the plague at Barga, where he was Commissary. Andrea, one of the few of the family who entered the Church, was Archbishop of Florence. The family came to an end in 1774 when the Senator Francesco Giovacchino de’ Buondelmonti died, and the palace is now the property of Signor Adami.
PALAZZO DEL BUONTALENTI
(CASINO DI SAN MARCO) Via Cavour. No. 63.
Ottaviano de’ Medici, whose house adjoined the Orti Medicei, bought, in order to obtain an exit into Via San Gallo, a house, courtyard and loggia, from the Compagnia dei Tessitori di Drappi, an offset of the Guild of Silk. The beautiful loggia in Via San Gallo, which Signor Iodico del Badia attributes to Giuliano da San Gallo, was walled up, but has recently been opened and well restored.[23] Ottaviano was held in such high esteem by the Medici family that Clement VII. made him administrator of all their property in Tuscany, and guardian of the young Duchess Caterina, the orphan daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, who afterwards became Queen of France. When Ippolito and Alessandro de’ Medici were forced to fly the city in 1527, Ottaviano took up his abode in the great Medici palace, in order to protect it from being looted. With the accession of Alessandro his duties ceased as far as the palace and the villas were concerned, but it was only when Cosimo I. ascended the throne that he was called upon to hand over the vast territorial possessions. He was found to be a debtor of 5,106 ducats, and in payment of this sum he ceded to the Duke his house adjoining the Orti Medicei.
When Francesco I. succeeded his father he commissioned Bernardo Buontalenti to build him a palace in the Orti, where he had a chemical laboratory and a furnace for smelting different metals in the hopes of discovering how to make gold, and part of Ottaviano’s house was incorporated with it. The Grand Duke left the palace to Don Antonio, his supposed son by Bianca Cappello, and Ferdinando I. confirmed the donation on the condition that he never married. Don Antonio embellished the interior, and made a beautiful garden, which he decorated with marble and bronze statues. He took a great interest in printing and had a private press, and continued the chemical experiments of the Grand Duke Francesco. Galileo was a friend of his, and Count Pier Filippo Covoni, to whose pamphlets we are indebted for the account of this palace, cites several of the Prince’s letters to him.[24] After his death the Casino passed to the Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici, who employed Matteo Rosselli and other artists to fresco some of the rooms which he filled with pictures. These were distributed among the various galleries of Florence by his heir, Cosimo III.; the statues and busts were sent to the gardens of Boboli, Petraja and Castello, and the fine cabinets and tapestries were removed to the Pitti palace. For many years the house remained empty; then it was used as barracks for the bodyguard of the Grand Duke, and in 1846 it became the custom house. During the few years that Florence was the capital of United Italy, the Foreign Office was installed in the Casino, which then assumed the more serious name of Palazzo del Buontalenti. It now is the seat of the Court of Appeal, and of the Assize Court.