Already a powerful family in 1173 when Mannello di Bellondino was created a knight of the Golden Spur for services rendered to his native city, they became yet stronger when his two sons Abate and Rinuccio attained the position of Elders of the Republic. They were Ghibellines, and intermarried with the great family of the Uberti. But several of Abate’s sons went over to the opposite faction, and to the valour of Messer Coppo was attributed the victory of the Guelphs at the battle of S. Jacopo in the Val di Serchio in 1256. He and his brother Mannelino fought against their cousins, sons of Rinuccio, at Montaperti, and had to fly from Florence with the other Guelph nobles. Six years later the Ghibellines were beaten, and when the “Peace of the Cardinal Latino” was proclaimed in 1280, members of the Mannelli family were found in both camps. Among the signatories of the peace was Lapo, son of Messer Coppo, who had fought gallantly at Campaldino and was knighted in 1292. He had many sons, all distinguished soldiers whose names figure in the long list of battles fought during the first half of the XIVth century. His grandson, Amaretto, was deputed to guard the Val d’Elsa against the Pisans. Amaretto declared himself a popolano in 1361, and assumed the name of Pontegiani; sixteen years later he was one of the Buonomini, but being “admonished” by the Captains of the Guelph party he joined in the Ciompi riots and was knighted by the mob in 1380. When the nobles returned to power he was exiled, and to while away time wrote a history of the world. By his wife, Maria Strozzi, he left two sons, Francesco and Raimondo; the elder, to whom the world owes a large debt of gratitude, was probably an ecclesiastic. An intimate friend of Boccaccio, he made a copy of the Decameron which would otherwise have been lost. Boccaccio left his own manuscript by will to Fra Martino of Signa for his life, and then to the monastery of S. Spirito in Florence. It is supposed to have perished either in the fire which destroyed the church in 1471, or more probably in Savonarola’s bonfire of “obscenities and vanities” in which so much that was beautiful and precious went into smoke and ashes. Boccaccio must often have been a guest in the Mannelli palace, and one regrets that his friend Francesco was not endowed with the pen of a Boswell, to have preserved for us the personality of Giovanni Boccaccio. Francesco Mannelli only finished his copy nine years after the death of his friend; it came into the possession of the Medici, but disappeared, and was fortunately discovered and bought by Messer Baccio Baldini, doctor to the Grand Duke Cosimo I. and librarian of the Laurentian library, where it now is. At the end of the manuscript is written: Qui finisce la decima e ultima Giornata del libro chiamato Decameron cognominato Principe Galeotto, Scripto per me Francesco d’Amaretto Mannelli di 13 d’Agosto 1384. Deo sit laus et gloria, in ecternum ad honorem egregi Simacu Spinis et beneplacitum, et mandatum.
TOWER OF THE MANNELLI.
Raimondo, his brother, was a sailor, and distinguished himself in an engagement against Spinola, admiral of the fleet of Filippo Visconti, who then held Genoa. The allied fleets of Venice and Florence met the enemy off Rapallo on the 27th August, 1431, but the wind was unfavourable and many of their ships found great difficulty in getting out of Porto Fino. Raimondo, seeing his friends hard pressed, urged on his crew with threats, ran down Spinola’s galley and took him and sixty of his men prisoners. He was shabbily treated by the Venetian admiral in command, who took, not only the honour and glory, but the prisoners and consequently their ransom, from him. Mannelli’s portrait is painted among other seafaring worthies on one of the ceilings in the Pitti palace. Messer Coppo’s posterity died out in the XVIIth century, and the present branch of the family descend from his brother Nerlo, whose son Chele was surnamed Gorget, from his uncomfortable habit of wearing that part of his armour by day and by night. He was a good soldier, and at San Casciano killed with his own hand the leader of a strong body of French troops sent by Henry VII. to raid the Florentine territory. Jacopo Mannelli took a prominent part in the revolt against the Duke of Athens, and was named custodian of the bridge of Sta. Trinita, but one of his descendants, Filippo, a canon of the cathedral, disgraced the name of Mannelli by revealing the deliberations of the Council of the Republic to the enemy. He died by the hand of another priest in 1536.
The old palace and the tower ran great risk of destruction, or at the least of alteration when Vasari made the corridor between the Pitti palace and the Uffizi. “In order to make the corridor straight,” writes Mellini, “it was necessary to pass through the house of the Mannelli by the Ponte Vecchio, at the end of the Via de’ Bardi; so he [Cosimo I.] sent for the owners of the said house and asked if they were courteously inclined to permit him to make the passage. On the plea that it would spoil their house they refused, and he then placed it as we now see on stone brackets, passing by a sharp turn round the outside of the house. But he bore them no rancour, saying that every one was master of his own.”[46] Two of the family, Jacopo and his son Ottavio, were made Senators in the XVIIIth century, and the family still own and inhabit the palace and the stern old tower which guards the Ponte Vecchio.
PALAZZO MARTELLI
Via della Forca. No. 8.
The Martelli descend from an ancient family who owned the castle of Stabbiello in the Val di Sieve, one of whom, Martello, came to Florence early in the XIVth century, and from him they took their name. From what Migliore writes, their houses were in Via degl’ Spadai (of the armourers), but as they became more numerous and powerful the name of the street was changed to Via de’ Martelli.[47] When the present palace was built, or by whom, is not known.
Ruberto de’ Martelli, a rich Florentine banker, was created a Count Palatine by the Emperor Paleologus in 1439; some years later Nicholas V. made him Depositary of the Apostolic Chamber, and in 1455 the Republic of Florence sent him to Rome to assist at the Conclave which elected Pope Calistus III. But his name is better known as the patron and friend of Donatello, whom he took into his house as a lad and brought up. “The Martelli have,” writes Vasari, in his life of Donatello, “many objects in marble and in bronze, amongst others a David three braccie high, and many other things, most liberally given by Donatello in attestation of the service and love he bore them; more especially a S. Giovanni, a statue in marble of three braccie high, all finished by him, a most rare piece, now in the house of the heirs of Ruberto Martelli, who made it an heirloom, ordering that it should never be pawned, sold, or given away.” Domenico, brother to Ruberto, was a friend of Cosimo the Elder, who employed him in many embassies, and in 1476 he was Gonfalonier of Justice, one of the nine the family gave to Florence, besides thirty Priors. His son Braccio was among the first of the adherents of the Medici to turn against them when Piero fled the city. He then became one of the Dieci di Guerra, in 1495 he was Commissary of the war against Siena, and later of the siege of Pisa. Pietro, his son, a munificent patron of men of letters, had a considerable reputation as a mathematician. His cousin Lodovico was a poet, whose tragedy Tullia is said to have been admired. If true, it only shows that people had more patience in those days, and were content to listen to speeches of intolerable length and tedium. He led the band of Florentine scholars who impugned the genuineness of Dante’s De Eloquio, found and published by Trissino. Another Lodovico was the hero of the duel with Giovanni Bandini, fought at Poggio Imperiale in the presence of the Prince of Orange in 1530, so minutely described by Varchi.[48] Lodovico died of his wounds, and his portrait was placed in the Uffizi gallery amongst other patriots, though patriotism had little to do with the duel, which was fought for love of Marietta de’ Ricci.
Camilla Martelli had the misfortune to attract the notice of the Grand Duke Cosimo I., who was induced by Pius V. to marry her in 1560, thus legitimating their daughter Virginia. He soon afterwards retired to the Villa di Castello, virtually abdicating in favour of his son Francesco, who inherited the cruelty and the vices of his father without his ability. The years Camilla spent at Castello with Cosimo can hardly have been happy, but after his death her life was a miserable one; shut up as a prisoner in a convent, out of which she only emerged for a few hours to assist at her daughter’s wedding with the Duke of Modena in 1586, she died, worn out with grief, four years later. Several of the Martelli entered the Church. Francesco became Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1698 and died a Cardinal, and Giuseppe was Archbishop of Florence in 1732. He belonged to the Academy of the Crusca, and was a great collector of books. The Martelli still live in the old family palace, and possess Donatello’s works.