Messer Corso went to Rome and persuaded the Pope to send Charles of Valois, brother of the King of France, who was on his way to Sicily, to pacify Florence. After swearing solemnly to preserve peace Charles armed his followers, and the alarm in the city was not lessened by the arrival of Corso with all the exiles. The prisons were burst open, the Priors relegated to private life, and for five days the houses of the White Party were given up to plunder and arson. A new Signoria was elected, entirely formed of the Blacks, and Charles named Cante di Gabbrielli, one of his adherents, Podestà. Proscriptions commenced, and one of the first names on the list was that of Dante.
Machiavelli describes Corso Donati as “a promoter of every disagreement and every tumult; all who desired to attain anything extraordinary turned to him, so that he was hated by many citizens of repute.... But the authority wielded by him was such that he was feared by all. To deprive him of the popular favour it was spread about that he sought to seize the State, to which his magnificent way of living, far beyond the ordinary, lent colour. After he had taken to wife the daughter of Uguccione della Faggiuola, head of the Ghibelline and the White Party, and most powerful in Tuscany, this report gained more credit. The marriage encouraged his enemies and induced the people to abandon him, and many joined his adversaries. Their leaders were Rosso della Tosa, Pazzino de’ Pazzi, Geri Spini and Berto Brunelleschi who, with their followers, and a great concourse of people, went armed to the palace of the Signori. The Signori ordered Piero Branca, Captain of the People, to accuse Messer Corso of desiring to make himself tyrant of Florence by the aid of Uguccione. He was cited to appear, and then condemned as a rebel in contumaciam, and only two hours elapsed between the accusation and the condemnation. After the delivery of the sentence the Signori and the Compagnie of the People, with their banners, went to take him. Messer Corso, whose courage failed not when he saw himself abandoned by many and heard of his condemnation, was not abashed by the authority of the Signori or the number of his assailants, but fortified his houses, hoping to be able to defend himself until the arrival of Uguccione, to whom he had sent for help. His houses and the streets near by had been closed by him and fortified by his adherents, and their defence was so valiant that the people, although numerous, could not advance. The struggle was great, with dead and wounded on both sides. Seeing that nothing was to be done in the open the people took possession of the houses adjoining his and, breaking through the walls, burst into his house. Finding himself surrounded by enemies and despairing of victory, or of aid from Uguccione, Messer Corso decided to try and save his life. Placing himself and Gherardo Bordoni at the head of some of his strongest and most trusted friends, he charged the enemy with such impetuosity that they fell back, and fighting he was able to pass through their ranks and leave the city by the Porta Sta. Croce. Many, however, pursued him, Gherardo was killed on the banks of the Affrico by Boccaccio Cavicciulli, whilst some Catalan horsemen, soldiers of the Signoria, came up with Messer Corso at Rovezzano and took him prisoner. On the way back to Florence, to avoid meeting his victorious enemies face to face and being tortured by them, he threw himself off his horse, and thus, lying on the ground, was killed by one of his captors. The monks of S. Salvi found his body and buried it without any honours. Such was the end of Messer Corso, to whom both his country and the Black Party owed much good and much ill. Had his disposition been of a gentler kind, his memory would be more honoured.” Dino Compagni says that Corso Donati was ill and suffering from gout at the time of his flight. “Much talk there was of the evil manner of his death, according as to whether they were friends or enemies,” continues the old chronicler, “but to speak truthfully his life was perilous [for the quiet of Florence] and his death was blameworthy. He was a knight of great courage and of old name, of gentle blood and well-mannered, very handsome, even in his old age, finely built, with delicate features and a pale complexion; a pleasant, wise and ornate speaker, and always occupied with important affairs, a consort and a friend of great lords and noble persons, counting many adherents and renowned throughout Italy. He was an enemy to the people and to popular government, well-loved by his partisans, but full of evil designs, wicked and astute.”
PALAZZO FERONI (NOW AMERIGHI)
Via de’ Serragli. No. 6.
A peasant named Balducci, from Vinci, was the ancestor of the Feroni family. One of his descendants, of the name of Ferone, established himself at Empoli as a dyer, and had dealings with Holland, where his grandson Francesco Feroni made a large fortune. Prince Cosimo de’ Medici made his acquaintance during his travels, and when he became Grand Duke summoned him to Florence, made him a citizen and a Senator, and in 1681 Marquess of Bellavista. He left an enormous fortune to his descendants, one of whom bought several houses in Via de’ Serragli, and built this large palace, which the Marquess Ubaldo Feroni enlarged in 1778. It was afterwards again considerably augmented by the addition of the suppressed church and monastery of S. Giuseppe, when another entrance into the spacious courtyard was made from Via S. Frediano. In the same year his brother the Marquess Alessandro bought the larger half of the ancient Palazzo Spini, which is sometimes called Feroni. In another palace in the Via Faenza they had a gallery of pictures, which the last of the family bequeathed to the city of Florence in 1850.
PALAZZO RICASOLI FIRIDOLFI
Via Maggio. No. 7.
The fine palace now inhabited by the Baroness Ricasoli Firidolfi and her children was built by the Ridolfi family on the site of houses belonging to various families, in the XVth century, and bought in 1736 by Maria Lucrezia Firidolfi for her sons. The architect is unknown, but the palace, with its fine courtyard, evidently dates from the XVth century. On the first floor is a tiny chapel, entirely painted in oils by Giorgio Vasari in a manner very different from his usual style. Above the altar is a marble bas-relief of the Madonna and Child with S. John, by Rossellini.
The history of this family is a complicated and a curious one. Divided in the XIIth century into three branches, of which one retained the old name of Firidolfi, whilst the other two took that of Ricasoli, they were again reunited after eight hundred years in the person of the late Baron Giovanni Ricasoli Firidolfi. His mother was the only daughter of the great statesman Baron Bettino Ricasoli, his father the sole surviving son of Giovanni Francesco Ricasoli di Meleto, who married the only daughter of the last of the Firidolfi, whose name he added to his own.
One of those long-bearded northmen (Longobardi), who came into Italy in the VIth century, is said to have settled in the Mugello. But the first of the family of whom we have documentary evidence is Geremia, son of Ildebrando, lord of great estates in the Mugello and of nearly the whole province of the Chianti, who being old, and without children, made large donations to the Church. On the death of his first wife he married a young girl, by whom he had one son, Ridolfo, inscribed among the great Barons of Tuscany in a deed of 1029. From him the family took the name of Firidolfi (de filiis Rudolphi). Ranieri Firidolfi fought under Frederick Barbarossa, and obtained in fief the castles of Campi and of Tornano, and, according to a tradition in the family, the strong castle of Brolio. This originally belonged to Bonifazio, Marquess of Tuscany, who in 1009 gave it to the monks of the Badia of Florence, a donation confirmed by the Emperor Henry II. in 1012, and by Henry IV. in 1074. Henry VI. not only confirmed his father’s gifts to Ranieri, but added to them the castles of Moriano and of Ricasoli, not far from Fiesole, from which the most powerful branch of the family took its name.
Alberto Ricasoli, Ranieri’s son, served under the Emperor Otho IV., who increased the privileges bestowed by former emperors, and in 1230 he was elected Podestà of Siena. From his sons Ranieri and Ugo descended the Ricasoli di Meleto of Ponte alla Carraja, and the great baronial family. Ugo fought in the Guelph ranks at Montaperti, and in revenge the Ghibellines destroyed his castle of Ricasoli, for which he obtained compensation when his party returned to power. Bindaccio, his grandson, showed such valour at the battles of Montecatini and Altopascio that the Bolognese chose him as their Podestà, and Cardinal Albornoz made him Captain-General of the Papal forces. One of his sons was a Bishop of Florence, whilst another, Albertaccio, was so gallant a soldier that at his death in 1335 the Republic gave him a public funeral, and decreed that his arms, with the banner of the people and of the Guelph party, should be placed above his tomb in Sta. Croce.
Ranieri Ricasoli di Meleto, a strong partisan of the Medici, was sent to Flanders after the Pazzi conspiracy to sequester the monies in their banks in Bruges, Ghent, etc. He was a very rich merchant, and built the stately old Ricasoli palace on the Lung’Arno Corsini in 1480, said to have been designed by Michelozzi (now the Hotel New York). Cinelli describes the fine collection of pictures, and the beautiful garden and loggia opposite (where now is the Hotel Bristol), then connected with the palace by a passage under the street.[33] One of Ranieri’s descendants was an intimate friend of Alfieri, whose tragedy Saul was first acted in the private theatre of the Ricasoli palace.