The spindle and the flax. Oh happy they.”
In the XIth century they had houses and a tower in the centre of old Florence and took their name from one Nerlo, son of Signorello di Ridolfo d’Ildebrando di Leone, who lived in 1079. Another Messer Nerlo was Consul of the city of Florence in 1196 and again in 1202. The Nerli joined the sect of the Paterines, and when Fra Piero da Verona preached a crusade against the heretics they fled and took refuge in France. Not being able to burn the living, the Friar desecrated the family tombs and burnt the corpses and the bones of their ancestors. The Nerli remained in France for a hundred and fifty years and must have abjured their heretic faith, as Cosimo the Elder recalled Francesco de Nerlo to Florence, and caused him to be made a Popolano and a Prior, the first of his house. His son Tanay became a man of great consequence in the city, and was one of the chief adversaries of Savonarola. It was at his instigation that the bell of S. Marco, with which the friars had summoned the people to their aid when Fra Girolamo was arrested, was taken to S. Miniato. Tradition says it was never tolled there but once, and that was for the funeral of Tanay Nerli. One of his sons was a good Greek scholar to whom we owe the first edition of Homer. Another son was father to the historian Filippo Nerli (1485–1536), whose Commentary is a model of pure and elegant Italian, but marred by too great a partiality to the Medici, to whom he was related through his wife Caterina Salviati, aunt of Duke Cosimo I. The descendant of another son was Archbishop of Florence and a Cardinal in 1669. About the same time his brother, Senator Nerli, bought the estate of Rassina from the Altieri with the title of Marquess, and one of his sons succeeded his uncle as Archbishop and as Cardinal. The palace now belongs to Signor Fiaschi Cuccoli.
CORNER OF PALAZZO NONFINITO, WITH COAT OF ARMS OF THE STROZZI.
PALAZZO NONFINITO
Via Proconsolo. No. 12.
“In 1592,” writes Baldinucci in his life of Matteo Nigetti, “Alessandro Strozzi bought a house from Camillo de’ Pazzi, that same Camillo who was father to S. Maria Maddalena, and a small one adjoining with a shop, at Canto del Papa, so-called in olden times from a family who lived there, but afterwards called the Canto de’ Pazzi; near to where the first wall of Florence ended towards the east with the Porta S. Pietro.” They were bought with the intention of building the fine, but unfinished, palace we now see, and Alessandro charged Bernardo Buontalenti not only to make the design but to superintend the work. Nigetti worked under him for seven years, until the façade as far as the sills of the first floor windows on the side towards the Duomo was finished. “The kneeling windows and the door in Borgo degl’Albizzi show how great was the talent of Buontalenti,” says Vasari; “he only built the first floor of the palace, as a difference arose with the owner about a certain staircase proposed by Santi di Tito, who did what little he knew and no more, and the building was then entrusted to other hands.” Scamozzi the Roman architect was at that time in Florence and continued the work for Ruberto Strozzi. When he left, Caccini became the architect and sculptured the fine coat of arms at the corner, shown in the drawing. After his death Nigetti was once more called in to superintend, and Cigoli designed the courtyard. The Guasti family bought the palace in the XVIIth century, and the entrance court, which till then had been open, was roofed over. With so many architects it seems strange that the palace should have remained in such a condition as to have merited the special name of Nonfinito (the Unfinished) in a city where but few of the great buildings are completed. It is possible that some dispute arose between the Strozzi and the Salviati, whose palace was opposite, about the height; in which the latter, connected with the Medici by the marriage of Maria Salviati with Giovanni delle Bande Nere, would have gained the day.
In 1814 the palace was bought by the Grand Ducal government, and Fossombroni, the enlightened minister of Fernando III., inhabited it for some time. It then became the office of the head of the police, and now is the central telegraph office of Florence.
PALAZZO PANCIATICHI
Via Cavour. No. 2.
This palace was built by Carlo Fontana for the Cardinal Bandino Panciatichi and is celebrated for its fine staircase, the incline of which is so gradual that one of the Panciatichi, an officer on the staff of the Arch Duke of Austria, used to ride upstairs. It was erected on the site of the houses of the Della Casa family, who would not merit special mention if Monsignore Giovanni Della Casa, born in 1503, had not belonged to the chief academies of the day and written Galateo, that elaborate essay on good manners whose title has passed into a proverb. He was Archbishop of Benevento in 1544 and soon afterwards Nuncio at Venice. The scandal caused by his burlesque poem Capitolo del Forno probably prevented his being made a Cardinal.[51]
The story of the Panciatichi family would be almost a history of Pistoja, as for more than three centuries the little town was torn to pieces by the bloody feuds between them and the Cancellieri. According to tradition they descend from a Roman Consul: