PALAZZO PANDOLFINI.
PALAZZO PAZZI
Via del Proconsolo. No. 10.
The Pazzi, who claim a Roman descent, came originally from Fiesole, and were always Guelphs. Excluded by Giano della Bella, in 1292, from all participation in the government of the city, it was only after Cosimo de’ Medici’s return from exile that Andrea de’ Pazzi became a Prior in 1439; when Cosimo gave his granddaughter Bianca in marriage to Gugliemo, Andrea’s grandson. The houses of the various members of the Pazzi family, who all made large fortunes in trade, once extended for some distance along both sides of Borgo degl’Albizzi. But when, towards the middle of the XVth century, the Florentine nobles began to erect palaces in lieu of their old fortified houses, Messer Andrea de’ Pazzi commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed the beautiful chapel for him in the cloister of Sta. Croce, to build a palace. Poliziano’s statement that Jacopo, Andrea de’ Pazzi’s son, destroyed his father’s house to build this palace, is controverted by documents found by Signor Iodico Del Badia in the archives of the old catasti, which show that Jacopo only incorporated an adjoining house he had bought with the one inherited from his father. The splendid palace cannot, however, have been completed when Andrea died in 1445, as his son employed Giuliano da Majano and his brothers to finish it. Another reason for attributing the building to Messer Andrea de’ Pazzi, and not to his son Jacopo, is that the sail, an emblem always used for indicating that the proprietor had made his fortune in trade, is among the ornaments in the centre of the arches of the windows. On the capitals in the courtyard are the dolphins, the arms of the Pazzi, and the vase containing the Holy Fire. This, according to ancient custom, was lit by means of certain stones, brought from the Holy Sepulchre by Pazzino de’ Pazzi, said to have been the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem in one of the crusades.
Under Lorenzo il Magnifico the Pazzi found themselves excluded from office, and their animosity was further aroused by the loss of a lawsuit involving the large fortune of Giovanni Borromeo, whose only daughter had married Giovanni de’ Pazzi, Andrea’s nephew. By Florentine law the daughter should have inherited from her father who died intestate, but it was assigned to her cousin, Carlo Borromeo. Guicciardini makes Pier Capponi say, “Tyrants are forced to watch the action of every one, and to cast down those who seem to them too powerful or too intelligent. Hence arose the wronging of the Pazzi, by an iniquitous law which deprived them of the inheritance of the Borromei, and the varied persecutions of the family, so that desperation drove them into that conspiracy whence came such infinite evils.” Francesco de’ Pazzi, Giovanni’s brother, described by Poliziano as “a man of blood who, when he meditated any design, went straight to his goal, being hindered by no regard for morality, religion, reputation, or fair fame,” quitted Florence and went to Rome, where the Pazzi had a banking house. He knew Sixtus IV. and was aware of his hatred of the Medici, a hatred he gratified by appointing Cardinal Francesco Salviati, a man of evil reputation and bitterly hostile to Lorenzo, to the See of Pisa. At Rome Francesco de’ Pazzi became intimate with the Pope’s so-called nephew, Count Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola; and Stefano Infessura, the well-informed Roman diarist, affirms that “these things [i. e. the murder of the Medici] were ordered by Pope Sixtus, together with the Count Girolamo and others, in order to take away the dominion from Lorenzo and to confer it on the Count Girolamo.” The dying confession of one of their instruments, Giovanbattista di Montesecco, captain in the papal service, fully confirms this.
COURTYARD OF PALAZZO PAZZI.
Advantage was taken of the presence at Pisa of Riario’s nephew, Raffaello, who had just been created a Cardinal. He was summoned to Florence, and Lorenzo, as was his wont, invited him to an entertainment at the Medici villa at Fiesole. The conspirators then determined to murder the two brothers, but Giuliano, being ill, did not go, so the attempt was postponed. Cardinal Raffaello expressing a desire to hear mass in the cathedral of Florence, Lorenzo invited him to go on Sunday, 26th April, and to dine at his palace in Via Larga afterwards. The conspirators then settled, that at the elevation of the Host, when it is customary for all to kneel, the deed should be done. Their design was nearly frustrated by the refusal of Captain Montesecco to commit a murder “where Christ would surely see him.” His place was hastily filled by Stefano da Bagnoni, parish priest of Montemurlo, and secretary to Jacopo de’ Pazzi, and by Antonio Maffei of Volterra, an Apostolic notary, who were to kill Lorenzo; while Francesco de’ Pazzi and one of his braves, Bernardo Bandini, were to fall on Giuliano. Montesecco’s scruples proved fatal to the success of the plot, as the two ecclesiastics blundered and only wounded Lorenzo slightly in the neck. Francesco de’ Pazzi did his work with such fury that he inflicted nineteen stabs on Giuliano, and wounded himself on the thigh. While this was going on in the cathedral, the Archbishop Salviati went to the Palazzo della Signoria, which he intended to seize, while Jacopo de’ Pazzi was to incite the people to revolt. Cesare Petrucci, the Gonfalonier, a shrewd man devoted to the Medici, was struck by the Archbishop’s embarrassed manner and confused speech; so he suddenly left the room, locked the door behind him and went to look out on the Piazza. There he saw Jacopo de’ Pazzi and his followers shouting “Liberty! liberty!” and at once ordered the gates of the palace to be closed. Citizens came running with the news of the assassination of Giuliano, and without a moment’s hesitation Petrucci seized the Archbishop and hung him from the column of a window overlooking the Piazza. Some of his followers, including Jacopo Poggio, son of the historian, were hung beside their leader, the rest were cut down on the staircase or in the courtyard. Francesco de’ Pazzi was seized in bed at his own house, and naked and bleeding from the wound in his thigh was hung by the side of the Archbishop, in whose shoulder he is said to have fixed his teeth in his death agony.
Gugliemo Pazzi, who knew of, but did not participate in, the plot, took refuge from the popular fury in the palace of his brother-in-law Lorenzo de’ Medici. He was banished. Giovanni de’ Pazzi, the husband of the Borromei heiress, eventually died in prison at Volterra, and the seven sons of Francesco de’ Pazzi’s brother Piero were either hung, condemned to perpetual exile, or to imprisonment for life. Jacopo was caught while crossing the frontier into the Romagna, brought back to Florence, and executed. His body was laid in the family vault in Sta. Croce, but the mob disinterred it, dragged it through the streets to his palace and battered the head against the door, amidst ironical shouts that the master wanted to come in. At length the body was thrown into the Arno, followed, as it floated down stream, by a jeering crowd.
In 1498 the fine palace was bought by Francesco Cibo, son of Pope Innocent VIII. and at his death went to his son Lorenzo, whose wife Ricciarda Malaspina was one of the many ladies admired by the base-born Duke Alessandro de’ Medici. Her brother-in-law, the Archbishop of Marseilles, then determined to murder the Duke. Varchi relates that “when Alessandro went to the palace he used to sit on a certain chest which was in the room of the Marchesana, very close to the bed in which she slept. So the Archbishop planned to fill a similar chest with gunpowder, and to set it in the place of the one the Duke was wont to use, and it was to be so made that he might easily set fire to the powder inside when the Duke sat on it. This he did because it seemed to him that the close friendship and great familiarity between the Duke and the Marchesana was a matter of reproach and most shameful. But while all things necessary for carrying out his evil intent were being prepared, the plot was discovered. He was imprisoned until the Emperor came to Florence, when he was released and allowed to go where it best pleased him.”