On the 18th May, 1491, Filippo Strozzi died, and Rossi writes: “In all the land has arisen great respect for the beautiful building, and he [Filippo] is held to be the good man he was. He had begun to put in the irons of the windows, five were already set in the front and the others were ready.” The day before his death Filippo made his will, containing most minute directions for finishing pictures and buildings commenced by him, particularly with regard to the “big house, which not being finished inside and out according to plan and model, so that both houses can be inhabited, my heirs are to see that it is completed; therefore fifty men at the least, between master-masons, men, and stone-cutters, are to be kept continually at work, so that without loss of time it shall be finished at the latest in the year 1496.” Filippo deputes “Messer Andrea Buondelmonti to hasten matters and to command everybody, at a salary of 50 ‘fiorini larghi’ a year for so long as he gives his time to the building, but the salary is to cease in 1496.” If not then finished he begs “the magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici, if then living, and willing to undertake the charge, to see that it be completed in two years from that date, and if he be not alive or is unwilling to accept such charge, then the Consuls of the Guild of Merchants of Calimala, with two governors of the hospital of Messer Bonifazio and two elders of the house of Strozzi, are to have authority to finish it.” The will is far too long to transcribe, but the following clause is too characteristic to omit. “In order that the said Lorenzo, or the said Consuls, etc., may see to the work, I direct that between 1496 and 1498, or for whatever less time may be needful to finish the said house, they be authorized to come once every fifteen days to dine in the said house, in whatever part thereof seems to them most honourable and convenient, at the expense of my heirs, but no dinner is to cost more than fifty lire piccioli.” Filippo also forbids his heirs to sell the house or even to let it, save to a Strozzi. The two houses mentioned in the will are in reality but the one palace which was built to serve for two separate families; a fact often forgotten when the internal arrangements are criticized. Filippo’s widow did her utmost to carry out his wishes. “She was most desirous,” writes her son Lorenzo, “to husband the family wealth for her sons, so that when they attained majority they might not find their paternal inheritance diminished or the house unfinished.” In the family archives the building may be followed week by week by payments to the various artisans until 1507 when, writes Giovanni Cambi, “Selvaggia, for account of her sons, finished her part in obedience to the will, but Alfonso” [Filippo’s son by his first wife] “took no heed of it and did not hasten to take up his abode in the house. He began by inhabiting the ground floor and then continued building little by little for his own need and use, so that the said building will remain imperfect and do dishonour to their father.” Lorenzo Strozzi confirms this when in mentioning the will he adds: “It is as though he had been prescient that some of them had in their minds not to carry out what he had ordered. Though on the palace, that grand and splendid work, he [Alfonso] spent something, yet he did it unwillingly, and the blame is his if it is still incomplete.”
Signor Iodici Del Badia, in his historical notes to Messer Mazzanti and Del Lungo’s fine work[94] throws doubt on the accuracy of Vasari in attributing the original design of the Palazzo Strozzi to Benedetto da Majano. Vasari states that “Filippo Strozzi summoned Benedetto da Majano, who made a model, isolated on all sides, and then commenced the work, but not according to the plan, as shall be explained below,[95] because several neighbours declined to sell their houses. So he began the palace as he best could, and nearly finished the shell thereof before the death of the said Filippo: the shell being of the rustic order and graduated as can be seen. The ‘bozzi’ from the first-floor windows downwards, as well as the doors, are huge rustic work, and from the first-floor windows up to the second-floor they are of lesser rustic work. Now it happened that at the very time that Benedetto left Florence, Cronaca returned from Rome, and being recommended to Filippo, made for him so admirable a design for the courtyard and for the cornice surrounding the palace outside that, perceiving the excellence of his talent, Filippo decided to leave all in his hands, and employed him ever after. So Cronaca added to the beautiful exterior of the Tuscan order a most magnificent Corinthian cornice round the top of the palace up to the roof, of which at present but the half is finished, of such exceeding beauty that it could not be improved or anything finer be desired. This cornice was drawn by Cronaca, who copied and took exact measurements of an ancient cornice at Spoglia Cristo, in Rome, acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful of the many existing in that city; it is true that Cronaca enlarged it in proportion to the palace, so that it might make a suitable finish, and with its projection a roof, to the said palace. Thus by his genius he understood how to use the works of others and made them almost his own, a thing few people can do; for the difficulty lies not alone in making copies and drawings of such beautiful things, but in knowing how to apply them according to necessity, with grace, proportion, and suitability.... Now Cronaca executed the said cornice with consummate art as far as the middle, all around the palace with label and egg, and on two sides he finished it, balancing the stones in such guise and so poising and tying them, that no better building can be seen or one finished with more care and perfection. Thus also all the other stones of this palace are so dressed and fitted that they appear to be of one piece, and not joined together. And in order that everything might be in unison, he caused beautiful iron-work to be made for the whole palace, and for the lanterns that are at the corners; all done by Niccolò Grosso Caparra, a Florentine smith, with extreme care. Marvellous in these lanterns are the cornices, the columns, the capitals, and the brackets, wrought in iron with perfect mastery. Never has any workman of recent times made objects in iron so large and so complex with such knowledge and skill.”
Other critics had already observed that the name of Benedetto da Majano, as an architect, appears in connection with no other building, and Signor Del Badia has found in the Strozzi archives that between Sept. 1489 and February of the following year, Giuliano da San Gallo received 115 lire (no small sum in those days) at three different dates, “for work, and in part for wood, used in making the working model for building the house;” in April 1490 “the carpenter Filippo d’Andrea received 9 lire for his trouble and his work on a model of the first floor of the house;” and in July a quantity of trunks of lime trees were bought to make “the new model” of 120 large and small columns. The iron cressets also do not appear to have been exclusively the work of the famous Caparra, for in the account-books of the family in 1491, 28 lire are mentioned as paid to Benedetto di Leonardo da Majano “for a wooden model of the cresset made by order of the chief,” and 13 soldi were reimbursed to Simon del Pollaiolo which he declares to have paid to Ippolito the turner for two wooden models of banderai [the iron rings between the windows].
In 1533 Filippo Strozzi the younger, irritated at seeing his father’s great work remain unfinished succeeded, together with his brother Lorenzo, in inducing their eldest half-brother Alfonso to finish his part, by offering to bear one-third of the expense. Two courses of “bozzi” were wanting, and the cornice. A contract was signed with stonecutters of Settignano for the cornice, and in October 1534 another with a master-mason for putting it up. But the rupture between Filippo and the Duke Alessandro stopped the work, and in August the following year the contract was dissolved by common consent.
Alfonso died without male heirs and the palace went to his half-brothers, Lorenzo, from whose Lives of the Strozzi these facts are quoted, and Filippo, who married Clarice, daughter of Piero de’ Medici and Alfonsina Orsini. This marriage created a great stir in Florence. The Strozzi and the Medici had always been rivals, and the Gonfalonier Piero Soderini denounced the “presumptuous licence and audacity” of young Filippo in daring to marry the scion of an exiled house. He was summoned before the Priors and though he defended himself with great ability was sentenced to a fine of 500 golden crowns and exiled for three years. His bride came to live in the palace in Florence, and by her modest and dignified manners won all hearts, so after some months her husband was permitted to return to his native city. A few years later the Medici were once again rulers of Florence; Giovanni ascended the papal chair as Leo X.; and astute Filippo Strozzi at twenty-two years of age became one of the most influential men in the city. But his brother lays stress on the fact that he was not elated by his position for, “if any Florentine saluted him by taking off his hood out of respect, or called him Messer Filippo, instead of as heretofore plain Filippo, he would be angry as though he had been abused; saying he was neither a doctor nor a knight to whom the title of Messere belonged, but plain Filippo, son of a citizen and merchant of Florence of the same name.”
When Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, the nephew of Pope Leo X., went in 1518 to France to marry Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, he insisted on his brother-in-law accompanying him, and Filippo left Palazzo Strozzi in great state clad in crimson velvet. He was also charged to represent the Pope as godfather to the son and heir of Francis I. M. de Fleuranges, who was at Amboise, describes the festivities as the most splendid that had ever been seen in France or in Christendom. They lasted for nearly six weeks and then the Duke and his bride returned to Florence. Six years later he died and his cousin, the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, ruled in Florence.
When Giulio de’ Medici, the illegitimate son of Giuliano, ascended the papal throne as Clement VII., Filippo Strozzi hastened to Rome to congratulate his wife’s kinsman, and to beg for a cardinal’s hat for his eldest son Piero. Not long afterwards the Pope was forced to take refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo, and had to sue for peace with Charles V. A hostage was demanded, and Filippo, sorely against his will, was chosen and went as a prisoner to Naples with Don Ugo di Moncada. Needless to say Clement kept none of his promises and Filippo was in some danger of losing his head. A shift in politics saved him just as his wife Clarice reached Rome, where she spoke some hard words to the Pope. Soon afterwards Clement for the second time sought refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo and Rome was sacked by the Constable de Bourbon. “Never,” writes old Varchi, “was chastisement so tremendous inflicted, nor was it ever more richly deserved.” Filippo and his wife left two days before the catastrophe for Civitavecchia and sailed for Pisa, where messengers met them from the Cardinal of Cortona, who was governing Florence for the Medici, and from Niccolò Capponi, brother-in-law of Filippo and head of the anti-Medicean party. Strozzi had need of all his prudence and astuteness at this juncture. Clarice urged him to proceed at once to Florence, where his influence would be supreme on whichever side he chose to use it. After much pondering he decided to send her to “try the difficult ford” as his brother Lorenzo puts it, and Clarice, who had always been he continues, “high-spirited even beyond what was prudent,” started for Florence at once. Her first interview was with Niccolò Capponi and others of the “Ottimati” or patrician party, to whom she promised her husband’s and her own help in expelling her kinsmen the Medici. She was then carried in her litter to the Palazzo Medici (now Palazzo Riccardi), where the Cardinal Ridolfi and young Ippolito de’ Medici met her on the staircase and conducted her into the room next the chapel where sat the Cardinal-Governor. He rose to salute her and, as Varchi writes, she said to him: “Ah Monsignore, Monsignore, whither have you led us. Does it seem to you that your past and present conduct is in any way similar to that practised by my ancestors?” After setting forth how they had always obeyed the will of the people, she turned to the two lads, Ippolito and Alessandro de’ Medici, and advised them to think of their own safety, for which she naturally felt more anxiety than the cardinal.
Two days later prudent Filippo Strozzi entered Florence; many of his relations and friends met him at the city gate and escorted him to his palace, which was crowded by anxious citizens eager to know what he would do. After long consultation he decided to go at once to the Palazzo Medici and advise the Cardinal to leave the city with Ippolito and Alessandro. On the 17th May, 1527, he and Niccolò Capponi rode with them, through a threatening crowd, down the Via Larga (now Via Cavour) to the city gate, and Filippo accompanied them ten miles further to their villa of Poggio a Cajano.
A year later he lost his wife and not liking the condition of things in Florence went to Lyons, where he had a large commerce in silk. One of his daughters had married Luigi Capponi and is described by Varchi as being “not less honest and virtuous than beautiful, noble and of most engaging manners.” She was invited to a masked ball given in honour of the marriage of Guglielmo Martelli to Marietta Nasi, where the Duke Alessandro and his courtiers were disguised as nuns. Among them was Giuliano Salviati, “a man,” writes Varchi, “of abominable life and ill fame. His wife bore an evil reputation and he, desiring that others should be like her, accosted Luisa at the ball and said some words, with actions worthy of himself but certes not of her; whereupon she, being virtuous and of high spirit, with haughty speech and scornful demeanour, repulsed him. But in the morning, when the entertainment which had lasted until daylight was over and Luisa wished to mount her horse,[96] he, being impudent and shameless, pressed forward to aid her repeating the words and the actions of the night before; and with most angry scorn she replied to him as he deserved. The affair passed, and would perhaps have had no consequences, had Giuliano been satisfied with using discourtesy towards a gentlewoman such as she was, and not openly boasted of his behaviour....”
It was customary on every Friday in March for people to go up to S. Miniato to obtain pardon for their sins, and Luisa’s brother Leone Strozzi, Prior of Capua, Giuliano Salviati and other young nobles, stood watching the ladies come out of the church. As Luisa passed Giuliano made some insolent remarks, so the Prior said: “Giuliano, you perhaps do not know that she is my sister;” whereupon Giuliano repeated his insulting words. On the following night, as Salviati was returning on horseback from the Palazzo Medici, he was assaulted by three strangers and wounded in the face and on the leg, so that he was lame ever after. Duke Alessandro was furious, and gave orders that the assassins must be discovered. Suspicion, of course, fell on the Strozzi. Piero, Leone the Prior, and two of their friends were arrested, and there was a question of putting them to the torture; but Clement VII. interfered, and ordered that nothing more should be done. Piero Strozzi and his brothers, knowing their lives were in danger, took horse and went to Rome. Meanwhile Luisa, who had remained in Florence with her husband, supped joyously one night, as the old chronicler Segni reports, with her sister Maria, wife of Lorenzo Ridolfi. A few hours afterwards she died in excruciating agony, and her body turned black. Her relations insisted on a post mortem examination, and the doctors declared that she had died from the effect of some virulent poison. Varchi more than hints that her own family were the culprits, out of fear that the Duke, “by means of some treachery or fraud, purposed to stain the honour of their family in the person of Luisa.” But Segni and others agree that, having repulsed the Duke Alessandro, as she had done Salviati, his infamous wife poisoned her by the Duke’s orders. Not long after the death of the beautiful Luisa, her father and her brothers were declared rebels and outlaws by the Duke Alessandro. The sentence was confirmed by his successor Cosimo I. because Lorenzino de’ Medici, after he had murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro, fled to Venice where Filippo Strozzi hailed him as a second Brutus.