Tradition says that the ancestor of the noble house of Rucellai was a Messer Ferro, who came from Brittany with an Emperor, and took up his abode at Campi, near Florence, where the family still own a fine villa. But according to Count Passerini,[83] an acknowledged authority, the real founder was Alamanno di Monte, a rich cloth merchant who, whilst travelling in the Levant about 1250, observed that a beautiful violet dye was extracted from the herb Oricella (Lichen Rocella of Linnæus); he introduced it into Florence, and from it the family took their name. Bernardo, his grandson, commonly called Naddo di Giunta, was Prior in 1302, the first of eighty-five the Rucellai gave to Florence; six years later he was Gonfalonier of Justice, and after him thirteen others of the family filled that important post. He built the chapel of Sta. Caterina, in Sta. Maria Novella, in which is the stately Madonna, said by Vasari to have been painted by Cimabue, whose triumphant progress through Florence he describes so vividly. Bencivenni, his son, generally known as Cenni di Naddo, played an important part in the faction fights between the Whites and the Blacks, and was six times elected a Prior of his native city. When Gonfalonier of Justice in 1328 he raised 60,000 golden florins to continue the war against Castruccio Castrocane, and by his energy and acumen saved Florence from falling into the clutches of the house of Anjou. After the city, owing to the incapacity of Malatesta da Rimini, General of the Florentine army, was seized by the Duke of Athens, Bencivenni’s son Naddo was beheaded, and he only saved his own life by taking refuge as a novice in the Dominican monastery of Sta. Maria Novella until the city had thrown off the yoke of the tyrant. Bencivenni was a man of large views and great prudence, he defended the people against the nobles and was so trusted by them that it was a common saying when a man was condemned to death, “God can save thee, or Cenni di Naddo.” The Rucellai then lived near the Piazza Vecchia di Sta. Maria Novella, and the Via di Cenni is supposed to take its name from him. Andrea, another of Naddo’s sons, having no taste for commerce, took service in France, where he was knighted, and fought in the wars against England. When eventually he returned to Florence he was made Castellano of Carmignano and the adjacent strong places guarding the Pisan and Lucchese frontiers. A few days before his death he determined to knight his two sons, Albizzo and Francesco; and as five marriages were to take place in the Rucellai family, he gave a splendid entertainment for the seven events in the cloisters of Sta. Maria Novella, which for a whole week resounded with music and dancing, singing and feasting. “Never,” says an old chronicler, “was so magnificent a sight.”
PALAZZO RUCELLAI.
Berlinghieri, his nephew, usually called Bingeri di Naddo, was a gallant soldier, to whom the town of Siena granted the right to quarter her arms, a white lion on a red ground, with his own, as a reward for his services against the Tolomei. Paolo, son of Bingeri, when Gonfalonier of Justice in 1364, promulgated a law against the excessive luxury of dress indulged in by the Florentine ladies, and augmented the sum set apart every year by the Commune for the completion of Giotto’s beautiful campanile. He left his second wife, Caterina Pandolfini, with four young boys and little to live on. A descendant of his, Francesco Rucellai, who wrote in the XVIIth century describes Giovanni, the eldest, as “a man of singular goodness and well grounded in literature. He began his commercial life under the auspices of Messer Palla Strozzi, a man famed for his great learning, nobility and immense riches. Palla seeing Giovanni’s excellent character and keen intelligence, and loving him as a son, determined to give him his daughter to wife, and he did it in this wise. Giovanni usually accompanied Messer Palla every morning at dinner-time, after work was over, as far as his house, and one day, when as usual he asked leave to go to his own people, Messer Palla told him to enter his house, and calling Jacopa, his daughter, told Giovanni to take the girl’s hand because he intended that she should be his wife. The said Jacopa when her father called her had just washed her hair, and did not wish to appear before a stranger in undress, so her mother made excuses for her; but Messer Palla insisted on being obeyed, saying in the presence of his family that the young man brought by him was to be her husband. In 1427 the marriage took place, when Giovanni became the partner of Messer Palla in his commerce and participated in the great gains made by the house of Strozzi, so that in time he became very rich.”
In 1456 Giovanni obliged his eldest son, Pandolfo, to marry Caterina, daughter of Buonaccorso Pitti. Even as a child Pandolfo was extraordinarily religious and had set his heart on entering the Church; but he was a good husband and father, and showed great ability in banking affairs and in the various high offices he filled. After his wife’s death, when his children were grown up and no longer needed him, he received the habit of S. Dominic at the hands of Savonarola, to whom he was devoted. Owing to the exile of Messer Palla Strozzi, Francesco Rucellai tells us that “Giovanni was out of favour, and for twenty years was looked upon with suspicion by the party of Cosimo the Elder, the ruler. So he was obliged to be careful, as people tried to stir up accusations against him. But real goodness is above malice and suspicion, and Giovanni preferred to suffer for the peace of the Republic rather than harm his beloved country by attempting to change the government for the benefit of Messer Palla and himself. Thus he gave no hold to his enemies, and Cosimo, astonished, desired to have him as a friend and relation. So in 1461 he gave Nannina, daughter of his son Piero, to Giovanni’s second son Bernardo, a lad younger than the bride.”
It is to Giovanni that we owe the lovely Palazzo Rucellai still inhabited by the family, which was built by his intimate friend Leon Battista Alberti, as well as the exquisite loggia opposite. In 1450 the palace was finished, and Neri di Bicci notes in his Ricordi: “In 1455 I painted for Giovanni Rucellai in his house five arches of sham perspective, a coat-of-arms in high relief with a helmet, and two half-length figures, a lady and a serving-man, in fresco.”
In the loggia of the Rucellai, now defaced by being turned into a post-office, the marriages of three of Giovanni’s five daughters were arranged on the same day “to his great content.” The citizens of Florence used to meet and discuss their affairs under these loggie, and after the introduction of the game of chess from the East, such large sums of money were lost at dice, draughts and chess, that a law was passed forbidding any games to be played in courtyards, porticoes, or loggie. Sacchetti[84] describes how “while seated in a loggia a most notable citizen of Florence, named Guido de’ Cavalcanti, was intent on a game of chess, a boy, playing with other children at ball, or with a top, as is their habit, often came near to him with such noise as boys usually make, and being pushed by a companion against the said Guido, he, perchance being worsted at the game, rose furiously and struck the boy saying: ‘Go and play elsewhere,’ and then continued his game. This angered the boy, who, crying and shaking his head, still loitered around muttering: ‘I will repay thee,’ and having a nail from a horseshoe he returned with the others to where Guido was playing, and with a stone in his hand went behind him and began to hammer on the bench at first softly, and at long intervals, and then quickly, and more impetuously, so that he caused Guido to turn round and say: ‘Dost thou desire more? It were better for thee to go home. What art thou hammering with that stone?’ The boy answered, ‘I am only straightening this nail.’ So Guido turned again to the board and continued his game. Little by little the boy, always hammering with the stone, stole nigh to where a fold of Guido’s tunic, or the trimming thereof, fell on to the bench, and holding the stone with one hand and the nail with the other, he drove it through the said fold, hitting harder and harder so that it should be firm and fast, with the intent that the said Guido should be driven to rise. And it came to pass as the boy desired. Guido, sick to death of the hammering rose quickly in great anger, the boy ran away, and Guido remained fastened to the bench by his tunic.”
Monsignore V. Borghini (MSS. Magliabechiana) mentions that fifteen loggie existed in Florence when he wrote, and traces of some of them may still be distinguished. One belonging to the Agolanti, opposite the Ghetto, was so celebrated in olden times as a place for arranging marriages, that the street corner was commonly called “del Parentado,” and people said that beneath that loggia you might be sure “di non far casaccia,” i. e., not to make an unsuitable alliance.
Not satisfied with building a palace, Giovanni also occupied himself with churches, for Vasari writes: “Wishing to ornament the façade of Sta. Maria Novella in marble at his own expense, Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai consulted with Leon Battista, his intimate friend, and having obtained, not only advice, but a design from him, resolved to do the work in order to leave a memorial of himself, and it was finished, to the great satisfaction of all, in 1477.” The Rucellai were always great patrons of the church of Sta. Maria Novella. Albizzo di Naddo di Giunta left in 1334 one hundred and sixty florins to build a tomb for himself outside the chapel of All Saints and to pay for the painting of the chapel itself. It was restored a hundred years later by Andrea Rucellai, whose name can still be traced on the marble stoop at the door. Another of the family, Gugliemo, gave the marble pulpit designed by Brunelleschi, and beneath it he made a vault, in which he was buried in 1477. He was so rich that he owned a large fleet of ships and was deputed by the Republic to receive Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, when he came to Florence. The indolence his brother Piero, Gonfalonier of Justice in 1455, became proverbial. No letter was ever read or answered by him, and Lorenzo the Magnificent, when he did not wish to reply to any document used to say, “I shall do as did Piero di Cardinale.”
Giuliano Bugiardini painted the martyrdom of S. Catherine for the altar of the chapel of the same name in Sta. Maria Novella for Palla Rucellai. “He kept it twelve years,” writes Vasari, “and in all that time never could finish it, as he lacked the invention and the knowledge for representing the various incidents that occurred in that martyrdom; and as he was always changing, trying how to arrange the wheels and how to represent the lightning, and the fire that burned them, he undid one day what he had done the day before.... Palla, who often asked him to finish the picture, at length bethought him to take Michelangelo to see it, and Bugiardini told him with how much labour he had painted the lightning, which falling from heaven had shattered the wheels and killed those who turned them; and the sun, which shining from a cloud liberates S. Catherine from death. He then begged Michelangelo, who could not control his laughter on hearing the woes of poor Bugiardini, to tell him how he would arrange eight or ten principal figures in the foreground of the picture; a row of soldiers on guard who, in the act of escaping, fall down wounded and killed; because he did not know how to fore-shorten them in such way as to get them all into so restricted a space. So Buonarroti, out of complaisance, and having compassion on the poor man, took a piece of charcoal and sketched a row of marvellous naked figures, fore-shortened in various attitudes, some falling back and others forward, both dead and wounded, drawn with the knowledge and the excellence which pertains to Michelangelo.”