TOWER OF THE ALBERTI.

The family were supposed to be extinct in 1760, but at this date Senhor De Vasconcellos came from Madeira and proved his descent from an Acciaiuoli who had settled in the island at the end of the XVth century. He married the orphan daughter of the last of the Florentine Acciaiuoli and took her name, but the family came to an end when Monsignore Filippo, a learned prelate, died at Venice in 1834.

PALAZZO ALBERTI
Via de’ Benci. No. 2.

Varchi tells us that the palaces of the Alberti were built on the site of those of the ancient family of Quona, near the town gate called after Messer Ruggieri da Quona. The picturesque little Café delle Colonnine, which in the XVth century was the workshop of Niccolò Grossi, marks where their loggia once stood, and the palaces of various members of the family extended from Piazza Sta. Croce to the river, in what was then the Via degl’Alberti. On the façade of the palace where Leon Battista Alberti lived, which was entirely modernized in 1838 by the architect V. Bellini, who then built the colonnade which divides the garden from the Lung’Arno, are two engraved marble slabs with plans of what it once was and what it is now.

The great family of the Alberti originally came from Catenaia in the Casentino, where they owned castles and lands. It is probable that their arms, four silver chains (catene), joined in the middle by a silver ring, are derived from the name of their castle. Five different families of Alberti, with different arms, are mentioned in the annals of Florence; but the Alberti whose palaces stood near the Ponte alle Grazie, from whom sprang that many-sided genius Leon Battista, bore the surname of Giudici from an Alberto who held the office of judge in Florence in the early days of the XIIIth century, and came, as has already been said, from Catenaia. The Alberti were always Guelphs, they went into exile after the battle of Montaperti and their houses were destroyed. Alberto, son of Messer Jacopo, was a Prior when the first stone of the Palazzo de’ Signori was laid in 1294 (the first of forty-nine of his house), while the number of Alberti who were prelates, ambassadors, gallant captains and knights of the Golden Spur, is innumerable. The death of Messer Niccolò degl’ Alberti in 1377, then one of the most illustrious and one of the richest citizens of Florence, was a public disaster. He had acquired the name of Father of the Poor and his funeral was attended by hundreds of families dressed in black, who mourned their benefactor. Near to his house in Via degl’Alfani (where a corner is still called Canto alla Catena from his coat of arms) he built, after the design of Agnolo Gaddi, a hospital called Orbetello for poor old women and fallen girls.

When in 1380 Giorgio Scali and Tommaso Strozzi attacked the Palazzo del Podestà and set Giovanni di Cambio free, the Signori thought it was time, as Machiavelli writes, “to liberate the city from the insolence of Messer Giorgio and of the mob. But they deemed it necessary to get the consent of Messer Benedetto Alberti (son of Niccolò). He was an exceeding rich man, humane, stern, a lover of the liberty of his country and averse to all tyrannical proceedings; it was therefore not difficult to obtain his consent to the ruin of Messer Giorgio.... Having ascertained that Messer Benedetto and the heads of the Guilds would side with them the Signori armed, and Messer Giorgio was taken while Messer Tommaso fled. The following day Messer Giorgio, to the terror of his party was beheaded.... Seeing Messer Benedetto Alberti among the armed men, he said: ‘And thou, Messer Benedetto, allowest that such an injury be done to me, which I, were I in thy place, would never have permitted to be done to thee? But I tell thee that to-day is the end of my woes and the beginning of thine own.’”

The Guelphs now ruled supreme. Executions and sentences of exile against the nobili popolani and the leaders of the people were of daily occurrence, to the great chagrin of Benedetto who made no secret of his displeasure. “Therefore the heads of the State,” continues Machiavelli, “feared him, esteeming him one of the friends of the people, and thinking he had acquiesced in the death of Messer Giorgio Scali, not because he disapproved of his conduct, but in order to be the sole leader.” The pomp and magnificence displayed by the Alberti a few years later, when crowned with gold, clad in white brocade and mounted on magnificent horses caparisoned with the same stuff, they rode through the streets of Florence and held jousts in honour of the acquisition of Arezzo, caused intense envy. When the name of Magalotti Benedetto’s son-in-law, was drawn from the borse as Gonfalonier of Justice he was set aside, and Bardo Mancini, an avowed enemy of the Alberti, was named in his stead. Not many days afterwards Benedetto was exiled, and with him Cipriano, “a most prudent citizen.” The former died at Rhodes in 1388, “and his bones,” says Machiavelli, “were brought to Florence and buried with the greatest honour by those who had pursued him with calumny and evil during his life.” When the Albizzi became all-powerful the popolani were persecuted. Benedetto’s sons were despoiled of their possessions and two were sentenced to be beheaded if they fell into the hands of the Podestà. Antonio Alberti was tortured, but escaped with his life and, “in order that the Alberti should not create disorders every day in the city,” he, his brothers and his sons were made grandi, which excluded them from holding any office. Lorenzo, another son of Benedetto, and seven of the family were exiled to 180 miles from Florence and all males above sixteen to 100 miles, under threat of severe punishment if they approached nearer to the city, or pledged or sold any of their property. Of course they conspired, and in 1412 every male, down to the smallest child, was exiled. Any Florentine who dared to harbour an Alberti was fined, while any who killed one of the hated family above eighteen years of age within the Florentine territory, received a recompense and the permission to carry arms. Any citizen marrying an Alberti or allowing his daughter to do so, was to be fined 1,000 florins; none were to trade with them, their loggia was destroyed and an inventory made of their property, which was seized as a guarantee that the exiles would behave properly. After the taxes had been paid and the dowers of the girls deducted, the income that remained was doled out to the respective owners.

Leon Battista tells us that his ancestors met their evil fate courageously; “meeting often and consulting together with fraternal affection, full of charity and good offices.... Their number, their intelligence, their assiduity in making friends by kindliness and giving help to many men, caused them to be much liked. They despised,” he continues, “the habit common to so many of saying that it is enough to know how to sign one’s name and to sum up what is owing.... It became a proverbial saying in Italy when a man was courteous and well-bred, such a one is as though born and brought up among the Alberti.... They were merchants, trafficking in noble and honest merchandize, and no pedlars; dealing in France and England in cloth and wool, as do the highest and the worthiest men of the city, an occupation that is good and honourable and he that engages in it is well-considered and respected in the land.”[3] The Alberti had houses of business at Bruges, Ghent, Brussels and in various French and English towns, as well as in Greece, Syria, Spain and all the Mediterranean ports. By their rigid integrity and their refusal to enter into speculative loans as the Bardi, Peruzzi and others, had done, they augmented their riches even whilst in exile. When Pope John XXII. called upon them to pay within eight days 80,000 golden florins deposited in their London bank, Ricciardo Alberti handed the sum to him in Bologna on the fifth day, it having been sent from Venice by his brother Lorenzo. Their condition however was a sad one. Fugitives, scattered over the face of the earth and far from home and friends, their joy must have been great, when Cosimo de’ Medici on his return to power in 1434 recalled them to Florence. By his influence Alberto Alberti was created a cardinal, and their name appears constantly in the magistrature under the Medici.

Lorenzo Alberti, son of Benedetto, seems to have established himself for a time at Genoa where Leon Battista was born, probably in 1404 (some give 1398 as the date of his birth and others 1414). He was educated at Bologna and had a hard struggle after his father’s death in 1421, as the relations in whose charge he and his brother were left cheated them out of their patrimony. Brought up for the church, he was ordained a priest and at twenty became a Canon of the cathedral of Florence. But intense study brought on a disorder of the nerves which caused loss of memory, and he applied himself to mathematics and the physical sciences, and adopted architecture as his profession. He invented several mechanical instruments, the Reticola de’ dipintori, the Bolide Albertiana and the Camera optica, a precursor of the Camera obscura.[4] His principal prose work is the Trattato della Famiglia, three books of which are said by the anonymous writer of his life to have been composed in Rome in ninety days. “Taken in its whole extent,” remarks J. A. Symonds, “this treatise is the most valuable document which remains to us from the times of the oligarchy.... From its pages a tolerably complete history of a great commercial family might be extracted; and this study would form a valuable commentary on the public annals of the commonwealth during the earlier portion of the XVth century.”