[78] These documents from the Florentine records may be found in Dominici Mariæ Manni de Florentinis Inventis Commentarium. Ferrariæ, 1731, p. 37, from which I have extracted the following:—“One of this family resided formerly a long time in the Levant, where he carried on trade, according to the custom of the Florentine nation. Being one day in the fields, and happening to make water on a plant, of which there was great abundance, he observed that it immediately became extraordinarily red. Like a prudent man, therefore, he resolved to make use of this secret of nature, which till that time had lain hid; and having made several experiments on that herb, and finding it proper to dye cloth, he sent some of it to Florence, where, being mixed with human urine and other things, it has always been employed to dye cloth purple. This plant, which is called respo, is in Spain named orciglia, and by botanists commonly corallina. The mixture made with it is called oricello, and has been of great utility and advantage to the woollen manufacture, which is carried on to greater extent in Florence than in any other city. From this circumstance the individuals of that family, by being the inventors of oricello, have been called Oricellai, and have been beloved by the people for having procured to them this particular benefit. Thus has written John di Paolo Rucellai (Manni says that this learned and opulent man wrote in the year 1451); and the same account is still given by dyers in our city, who relate and affirm that their ancestors have for a century exercised the art of dyeing, and that they know the above from tradition.”
This is confirmed by another passage:—“One of this family, on account of the trade carried on faithfully and honestly by the Florentines, travelled to the Levant, and brought thence to Florence the art, or rather secret, of dyeing in oricello.”
[79] In the genealogical history of the noble families of Tuscany and Umbria, written by P. D. Eugenio Gamurrini, and published at Florence 1668–1673, 3 vols. in folio, is the following account, vol. i. p. 274, of the origin of this family:—“This family acquired their name from a secret brought by one of them from the Levant, which was that of dyeing in oricello, never before used in this country. On that account they were afterwards called Oricellari, as appears from several records among the archives of Florence, and then by corruption Rucellari and Rucellai. Of their origin many speak, and all agree that they came into Tuscany from Britain.”
[80] The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, by George Glass. London, 1764, 4to.
[81] [Dr. Ure copies this information in his Dictionary, but gives it as the return of an official report for the year 1831!]
[82] This information is to be found in Hellot’s Art of Dyeing, into which it has been copied, as appears by the Dictionnaire d’Histoire Naturelle, par Valmont de Bomare, from an account written by M. Porlier, who was consul at Teneriffe in 1731.
[83] As the archil grows in the African islands, and on the coast of Africa, Glass supposes that the Getulian purple of the ancients was dyed with it; but this opinion is improbable, for Horace praises “Gætula murice tinctas vestes.”
[84] Lettres sur l’Histoire Naturelle de l’Isle d’Elbe, par Koestlin. Vienne, 1780, 8vo, p. 100.
[85] Lib. xxvii. c. 9.
[86] Nova Plantarum Genera. Flor. 1729.