“I will tell how my house fell, and how we were saved. I rose early as is my wont, and went into my study. Many years before I had noticed that the house had somewhat suffered on the side against the hill, but never did I imagine that there was any danger of its falling. A man from Campiglio was staying with me, and being ill with fever he could not sleep. All night long he heard ceilings cracking and bits of mortar falling, so he rose at daybreak, and seeing certain fissures in the walls, dressed as well as he could and came to warn me. I, believing that these were old cracks, paid small attention to him, and continued my writing. But he being alarmed, left the house. Soon afterwards I heard a great noise, and felt the house tremble, and I left my room to find out the cause of the noise, when my people told me that a large stone pilaster at the foot of the stairs was broken, which alarmed me. Whilst I was thinking what was to be done, and whether we ought to leave the house, I felt a very great shaking, and saw cracks opening in the window-sills, doorways and walls. So with great fear I thought only of saving our lives, and began to shout aloud that every one was to fly with me. Seizing one child in my arms, taking another by the hand, and giving others to my people, shouting and calling I ran to the stairs. Some had already given way, and mortar was falling on all sides. In yet greater terror I rushed down the stairs and out of the house, and took refuge in Sta. Lucia. By my side and behind me ran others, and the last one to come was my wife. I being on the steps of Sta. Lucia, and she still in the street, I caught her by the arm and helped her to mount the steps of the church. Hardly was she safe inside when our house fell all at once with such impetus against the façade of the Canigiani palace and of Sta. Lucia, that I thought the church and all the houses by the river would have been knocked down. No bit of wall higher than one foot remained standing; the vaults gave way, and the houses were ruined to their foundations. Two horses were buried under our house, and all our clothes, linen, and furniture, of every description. It was only by the especial grace of God that of the seventeen persons in our house none were lost. Had we lingered long enough to say a credo, or had Sta. Lucia been shut, we should all have been killed.”
Only three persons lost their lives in this catastrophe, a fourth, a boy of eleven, was saved by a beam falling against the wall, under which he remained unhurt. Baldinucci tells us that “while the child was crying for help under the ruins, and people were throwing bread and other food down an aperture, in order to keep him alive while they tried to remove a huge mass of stones, bricks and wood, a servant of the Duke Cosimo passed by. Horrified at what he saw, he went to the palace immediately and told his master. The Duke ordered that every effort should be made to liberate the wretched boy, and when he was free he took him into his palace, and ever after protected and aided him.” The boy grew up, and became that excellent and universal genius Bernardo Buontalenti.
PALAZZO CAPPONI (NOW FARINOLA)
Via Gino Capponi. No. 29.
Many were the palaces owned by the Capponi family in Florence, now only two bear their name. One in the Via de’ Bardi belonging to the Counts Capponi (see p. 71), and this, built by Fontana in 1705 for the Marquess Alessandro Capponi, the largest private palace in the city, with a handsome staircase and a fine garden. Here in 1876 died the Marquess Gino Capponi, one of the makers of United Italy, last of his branch of the family, regretted by his fellow-citizens, who had a great admiration for his noble character. His Storia della Republica di Firenze has a world-wide reputation. The palace now belongs to his daughter, Marchioness Farinola.
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.