Chapter IV: Preface (4)

At Arcetri, Galileo rented a villa from his pupil Esau Martellini, called “Il Gioiello” (the Gem). This was practically his prison, as the Inquisition forbade him to hold meetings, give lectures, receive friends to dinner, or “commit any action showing a want of reverence.” In 1634 his favourite daughter, a nun in the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri died, and the sick man was inconsolable, but Urban VIII, and his worthy advisers the Jesuits, continued their persecution, ordering that he was not to converse with anyone “not even the most wise and respectable person.” Through the Grand Duke he petitioned the Pope to grant him some mitigation of his rigorous imprisonment, whereupon the Inquisition commanded him to desist from further supplications on pain of instant punishment. In 1638 Galileo became blind and died four years later. Viviani describes him in his old age as “strongly built, of middle height, full-blooded, phlegmatic and very strong, but hard work and pain, both of body and mind, had debilitated his frame, so that he often fell into a languid condition.” He was a good musician and played well on the lute, a clever draughtsman, and so able an architect that the government consulted him on the new front they desired to build for the Cathedral of Florence. After 1633 all his letters are dated “from my prison at Arcetri.”

Not far from the Bellosguardo villa, but on the other slope of the hill, overlooking the lower valley of the Arno, stands the old Villa Montauto, once belonging to the Bonciani, who owned large possessions about there. In the tower of this villa Hawthorne wrote _Transformation_, and the peasants still remember the foreign gentleman who “sat like an owl up in the tower and refused to come down to talk to visitors.” He describes it accurately in the twenty-fourth chapter of his novel.

“About thirty yards within the gateway rose a square tower, lofty enough to be a very prominent object in the landscape, and more than sufficiently massive in proportion to its height. Its antiquity was evidently such that, in a climate of more than abundant moisture, the ivy would have mantled it from head to foot in a garment that might by this time have been centuries old, though ever new. In the dry Italian air, however, Nature had only so far adopted this old pile of stonework as to cover almost every hand’s-breadth of it with close-clinging lichens and yellow moss; and the immemorial growth of these kindly productions rendered the general hue of the tower soft and venerable, and took away the aspect of nakedness which would have made its age drearier than now.

“Up and down the height of the tower were scattered three or four windows, the lower ones grated with iron bars, the upper ones vacant both of window-frames and glass. Besides these larger openings, there were several loopholes and little square apertures which might be supposed to light the staircase that doubtless climbed the interior towards the battlemented and machicolated summit. With this last-mentioned war-like garniture upon its stern old head and brow, the tower seemed evidently a stronghold of times long past. Many a crossbowman had shot his shafts from those windows and loopholes, and from the vantage height of those grey battlements; many a flight of arrows, too, had hit all round about the embrasures above, or the apertures below, where the helmet of a defender had momentarily glimmered.... Connected with the tower, and extending behind it, there seemed to be a very spacious residence, chiefly of more modern date. It perhaps owed much of its fresher appearance, however, to a coat of stucco and yellow wash, which is a sort of renovation very much in vogue with the Italians.”

FOOTNOTES:

[44] _Italy._ Samuel Rogers. P. 140.

VILLA DI CASTELLO

The villa of Castello, “built by Pier Francesco de’ Medici with much judgment,” as Vasari remarks, belonged to the Medici family before they became Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and was always one of their favourite residences. Unlike Petraja, which towers above the plain, Castello is a long low villa on a gentle incline above the high road, with no extensive view, and the eye feasts only on the garden behind. And what a charming scene it is on a windless summer’s day! The magnolia trees, the pride of the place, are in flower, copper beeches and oleanders mingle their glorious colours in marvellous variety above the green lawns and give a luxuriant look to what is really a formal garden; for on the terraces which rise from the back of the villa, lemon trees in big terra-cotta pots edge the gravel walks, and the Florentine gardener has not forgotten to tie the carnations to canes so that they stand stiffly up from their pots on the low walls. Then there is the fountain in the centre of a terrace of its own, divided from the others by steps, and surrounded with statues of ladies and gentlemen of the Medici family; but their drapery is so tightly drawn round them in stiff straight folds that they resemble far more one’s idea of Roman senators and their wives.

The fountain, generally referred to as a work of Giovanni Bologna, Vasari attributes to Tribolo, and the mixture of bronze and marble is fine. It is divided into various basins; on the larger one are four little bronze “putti” lying on the edge of the marble basin playing with the water. Below them, in the centre of the fountain, seven marble “putti” are seated upon lions’ claws; four rams’ heads look over the edge of the upper and smaller basin, and marble figures of children hold wild geese by the necks which spout water from their bills. Four other “putti” are seated below the pedestal on which Hercules is wrestling with Antæus, a group by Ammanati, so curiously like figures by Pollaiuolo that it might have been suggested by one of his drawings. Breasting the hill and crossing another terrace we come to a large cool grotto scooped out of the hillside, its roof decorated with masks, scrolls, baskets of flowers and arabesques done in different coloured shells. Queer, nearly life-size animals fill the three recesses in the grotto, a camel with a monkey on its back, a unicorn, a wild boar, a ram, a lion, a bear, hounds, and smaller creatures carved out of various marbles and stone to correspond to the colours of the animals portrayed, stand on rocks in happy confusion. Animals from every quarter of the globe are united here by the fanciful artist whose one idea was not zoology but the amusement of the members of a Florentine ducal house during long summer days. In order to enhance illusion he has given the stag and the ram real horns, and the boar has real tusks in his ferocious mouth. The large sarcophagii, or baths, under these groups, of white and pink marble, are very fine. One has all sorts of sea fish sculptured on its side; the others, a tangle of shells, crabs, lobsters and crayfish; all three rest on large dolphins.

On the terrace above this grotto are remains of the labyrinth described by Vasari in his life of Tribolo, some fine trees and a large round reservoir full of emerald green water with an island in the centre on which crouches a colossal bronze figure of the Apennines surrounded with lilies and ferns. The statue is said to be by Tribolo, and one asks oneself how the same man who designed the lovely fountain in the garden could perpetrate such a hideous monster.

The walk (about a mile) from Castello to Petraja through the ilex wood is very charming, and passes close by a small church—or rather one may call it a campanile with a chapel attached, for the exquisite beauty of the bell-tower is the first thing to attract one as it rises from the hillside so evenly balanced by a group of cypresses. The whole forms a perfect jewel of architectural effect. No wonder the people of the country round are proud of their campanile and call it “la meraviglia di Castello.”

The name of the villa does not come from _castle_ as is often said, but from the roman _castellum_, a receptacle for water. Villani tells us that Marcrinus, a Roman senator, made a conduit on arches and brought the water seven miles, in order that the citizens of Florentia might have abundance of good water to drink. The aqueduct started from the streamlet Marina at the foot of Monte Morello, and collected all the springs above Sesto, Quinto, Colonnato, etc., on its way. That worthy old academician, Domenico Manni, in his book _Le Terme Fiorentine_, describes various arches, pilasters, and great pieces of masonry still existing in his time (1750) near Doccia, near the torrent Mugnone, near the Villa Corsini, close to Castello, and at Ponte a Rifredi. He gives drawings of two arches which soon afterwards fell down, and copies of many inscriptions found while digging foundations for houses or ploughing the fields. The aqueduct is still commemorated in the name of a church near Montughi, San Stefano in Pane de Arcora.

Caterina Sforza, widow of Giovanni de’ Medici, the celebrated mother of a still more celebrated son, inhabited Castello during the last seven years of her chequered existence. An illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Milan, she was affianced at eleven years of age to Girolamo Riario, a favourite nephew of Sixtus, and married to him after the murder of her father. Her beauty, grace of manner, wit and intelligence gained the heart, not only of the Pope but of all who knew her, to judge by the impassioned description given by Fabio Oliva when she was about twenty. “As she issued from her litter, it seemed as if the sun had emerged, so gorgeously beautiful did she appear, laden with silver and gold and jewels, but still more striking from her natural charms. Her hair, wreathed in the manner of a coronet, was brighter than the gold with which it was entwined. Her forehead of burnished ivory almost reflected the beholders. Her eyes sparkled behind the mantling crimson of her cheeks, as morning stars amid those many-tinted lilies which returning dawn scatters along the horizon.”

After the murder of her first husband in 1488, avenged by her without mercy, she proclaimed her son Ottaviano, Count of Forli; and soon afterwards married Giacomo Fea, the handsome, loyal and brave captain who kept the citadel of Forli so well against the insurgents who had killed Count Girolamo Riario. Ratti, the biographer of the Sforzas says: “It would be difficult to find in history any woman who so far surpassed her sex, who was so much the amazement of her contemporaries and the marvel of posterity. Endowed with a lofty and masculine spirit, she was born to command; great in peace, valiant in war, beloved by her subjects, dreaded by her foes, admired by foreigners.” Likenesses of Caterina, of her first husband and her two eldest sons, are to be seen in the altarpiece of the Torelli chapel in the church of San Girolamo at Forli.

In 1496 she was once more a widow, Giacomo Fea having been murdered by some of her own subjects, whom she punished as she had done the assassins of her first husband. Giovanni de’ Medici, envoy of Florence to the court of her son, married her the following year and died soon after, leaving her with an infant boy. After vainly trying to stem the invasion of her eldest son’s territories by Duke Valentino, who entered the citadel of Forli by treachery, she was made prisoner and sent to Rome; but after a short imprisonment was allowed to retire to Florence, where she dedicated herself to the education of her little son, Giovanni de’ Medici. Her letters, full of family troubles, complaining bitterly that she was left without sheets for her bed, forks or tablecloths, are sad reading. Pierfrancesco and Lorenzo de’ Medici attempted to contest her right to the villa and to the little that was left of the heritage of her third husband “the Magnificent Joanne de’ Medici”; and she lived in constant fear that Lorenzo, who had unlawfully assumed the tutelage of her son, would make away with him in order to dissipate the patrimony of his dead father. After a law suit she rescued the boy from the clutches of his uncle and smuggled him, with some waiting-women, into the nunnery of Anna-Lena. Here, dressed as a girl and jealously guarded by the faithful nuns, the future soldier Giovanni delle Bande Nere—the last of the great condottiere—passed eight months. It was only after the death of Lorenzo, in 1504, that he joined his mother at Castello, when she devoted all her remarkable energy to his education. Tutor succeeded tutor, for Madonna Caterina wished the boy to be an accomplished and learned gentleman; but he despised book-learning, and only cared for athletic exercises and out-door sports. “So you have your boy back,” wrote an old follower of her husband whom she commissioned to procure “a small and handsome horse” for the seven year old Giovanni. “If my father had come to life again I could not be more glad; and so it is with all the condottieri here in camp. The day your letter arrived the commissary was so overjoyed he could not eat. As to the horse, we will search among the condottieri here, and whosoever has one will be only too proud to give it. We shall, without fail, find what you want.”[45]

In 1527 there were grand doings at Castello, when, as is described by old Varchi, two armies came, “one to attack and pillage Florence as an enemy—which was the army of the Bourbons; while the other under the guise of a friend and defender pillaged and spoiled her—which was the army of the League; and it happened that on the last Friday of April, which was on the twenty-sixth day of the year 1527, the Cardinal of Cortona [Silvio Passerini], although he knew all the intrigues and confabulations of both old and young against the State, either not believing or wishing to show he feared them not, left Florence most imprudently with the other two Cardinals, the Magnificent, Count Piero Noferi and the whole court, and went a little over two miles outside the Faenza gate to Castello, the villa of Signor Cosimo, to meet and receive the Duke of Urbino and the other heads of the League. Meanwhile the citizens rose and took possession of the palace of the Signoria, and the Cardinals with Ippolito had to return in all haste to quell the insurrection. Thereupon the citizens sadly and sorrowfully went back to their houses without injury but in great fear.”

Maria Salviati, the mother of Cosimo I, died at Castello; and they say he was with difficulty persuaded to quit a hunting party and return to receive her last blessing. He enlarged the villa considerably on the eastern side after the designs of Tribolo, and charged Pontormo to decorate the Loggia, but all the frescoes have perished. Cosimo retired to Castello after his secret marriage with Camilla Martelli, a marriage so distasteful to his Austrian daughter-in-law that she wrote to her brother the Emperor to complain. He answered in the following arrogant lines which she was silly enough to send to her father-in-law: “I cannot conceive what the Grand Duke was thinking of when he made so shameful and odious an alliance, ridiculed by all; it is thought the good Duke must be out of his mind. I beg Your Highness not to permit this impudent woman to be exalted, and to hold no communication with her; for if in this matter you fail to show the greatness of Your soul and Your magnanimity, everyone will be angered.”

The reply given by Cosimo de’ Medici was far more dignified: “As to my having taken a wife, H.I.H. remarks that perhaps I had taken leave of my senses.... One might have rather said I was off my head when I ceded the reins of government to the Prince (Francesco, his eldest son, husband of the Arch-Duchess) with seven hundred thousand ducats of income. I did it with pleasure and I have no intention to cancel my act, although it depends on my own will and pleasure, because I had to do with men; but with regard to my marriage, wherein I had to do with God, one cannot speak thus. I am not the first Prince who has taken a vassal to wife, and shall probably not be the last; my wife is of gentle birth, and is to be respected as such. I do not seek for quarrels, but I shall not avoid them if they are forced upon me by my own family. When I make up my mind to do a thing, I do it, regardless of the consequences, trusting in God and my own right hand.”

In October 1608 Castello was the scene of much rejoicing for the reception of Maria Maddalena of Austria, who passed some days there before her solemn entry into Florence as the bride of Cosimo, eldest son of Ferdinando I. The pomp and magnificence then displayed surpassed anything yet seen; Ferdinando himself crowned his daughter-in-law at the gate of the town, and then the Arch-Duchess, mounting a splendid white palfrey, rode to the cathedral door amidst the acclamations of the crowd. Christine of Lorraine, widow of Ferdinando I, whose favourite villa Castello was, died there in December 1636 after two days’ illness; and twenty-seven years afterwards her grandson Giancarlo, brother of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, who was first a soldier in the service of the King of Spain and then a Cardinal, closed his unworthy life in the same villa. Described as “a man of little worth and of evil morals,” he yet has a claim to the gratitude of posterity as the builder of the charming theatre of the Pergola.

The gardens of both Petraja and Castello have been celebrated by many writers in poetry and prose. Among others Redi, the jovial doctor, sings the praises of the vineyards in his _Bacco in Toscana_, and takes the opportunity to pay a compliment to that poor creature Cosimo III, his patron.

“But lauded
Applauded,
With laurels rewarded,
Be the hero who first in the vineyards divine
Of Petraja and Castello
Planted first the Moscadello.”[46]

Jacopo Cortesi, the Jesuit painter, better known as _Il Borgognone_, lived as the guest of Cosimo III for some months at Castello, and painted his own portrait there for the Uffizzi gallery in the habit of his Order. Vast sums were spent by Pietro Leopoldo, the beloved Grand Duke of Tuscany who became Emperor of Austria, on beautifying the gardens of the two villas, and they still bear some faint traces of his love for rare trees and shrubs.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] _Caterina Sforza._ By Pier Desiderio Pasolini. Vol. II. p. 321. Firenze, 1893.

[46] _Bacchus in Tuscany._ A dithyrambic poem, from the Italian of Francesco Redi, with notes original and select. By Leigh Hunt. London, 1828.

VILLA CORSINI AT CASTELLO

This villa first belonged to the Strozzi, who sold it to the Rinieri in 1460, when it was called “La Lepre dei Rinieri.” About a century later it was bought by Francesco di Jacopo Sangalletti, whose estates were confiscated by the Medici, and sold to Pagolo Donati in 1597. It again changed hands and at last became the property of Cosimo de’ Medici, son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I, but finding it useless to have three villas—Petraja, Castello and Rinieri—so close together, he sold the last in 1650 to Piero Cervieri, who died without heirs and left all he possessed to the Jesuits. On the suppression of their Order the villa was bought by the Lanfredini, from whom it passed into the possession of the great house of Corsini, who enlarged and altered it, probably from the designs of Antonio Ferri, the same architect who built the large saloon, the fine staircase and the façade of the Corsini palace on the Lung’ Arno in Florence.

Villa Corsini stands at the foot of the royal villa La Petraja. It is a rather stately baroque edifice, with a large square courtyard in the centre; and though but little raised above the plain, the view of Florence from the south side of the garden is lovely. On the north is a typical Italian pleasaunce, where narrow paths meander under the deep shade of tall ilexes, oaks and fir trees; grey stone columns and balustrades surround small squares and circles of ground, as though it had been once parcelled out among the children of the house. A fountain represents a prancing seahorse who is unceasingly occupied in keeping a huge sarcophagus, entirely overgrown with maiden-hair fern, always brimful of water. Standing by the splashing fountain we get a beautiful glimpse of Petraja through the trees, standing high up on the hill behind. Prince Corsini told me the fine ilexes at Narford Hall were raised from acorns off these trees; the much-travelled Sir Andrew Fountaine, who resided for some time in Florence, and probably bought a good deal of his celebrated collection of Italian pottery from the Grand Duke Cosimo III,[47] was an intimate friend of Prince Corsini who sent a bagful of acorns to Narford. A present feature of the garden of the Villa Corsini is a shady avenue of ilexes which leads to the stable and was planted only fifty years ago.

To English people the villa is interesting as it was inhabited by Sir Robert Dudley, to whom it was lent by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Robert Dudley (born 1573) was the son of the Earl of Leicester by his second wife Douglas Howard, widow of Lord Sheffield; but the marriage, for various private and political reasons, was secretly solemnised and never acknowledged by Leicester, who a few years later married Lettice, widow of the Earl of Essex. Leicester calls Robert Dudley “my base son” in his will, yet he left him “the lordships of Denbighe and Chirke, etc., the castle of Kenilworth with all the Parkes, Chases and Lands after the death of my dear brother Ambrose the Earl of Warwick,” and other estates too numerous to mention here.

The Earl of Leicester died in 1588, and his brother a year later, when Robert Dudley succeeded to Kenilworth. In 1591 he was affianced to Frances Vavasour, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, who however forbade the celebration of the marriage on account of Dudley’s youth.

Dudley was educated at Christ Church, Oxford; where, under the date 7th May 1588, he was entered as _Comitis Filius_. But his love of travel and adventure drove him to study navigation; he built some warships, engaged the best pilots he could find and started for the West Indies. After conquering the Island of Trinidad he discovered Guiana (of which he made a map published in his work, _L’Arcano del Mare_), and after taking several galleons from the enemy returned to England with much booty. Entering the navy, he, in the absence of his uncle the Earl of Nottingham, took command of the English fleet in 1596; the following year he led the van-guard in the battle of Cadiz; then he besieged Faro in Algarve in Portugal; and when Calais was taken by Mendoza, he commanded the English ships sent to the rescue.

In a letter to the Rev. Mr Hakluyt, a well-known writer on sea-voyages and travels in the time of Elizabeth and James I, Dudley gives a curious account of his first voyage at the age of twenty-one. “... I weighed ancker from Southampton road the 6th of November 1594. Upon this day my selfe in the ‘Beare,’ a ship of 200 tunnes, as Admirall; and Captaine Munck in the ‘Beare’s Whelpe,’ Vice-Admirall; with two small pinnesses, called the ‘Frisking’ and the ‘Earwig,’ I passed through the Needles, and within two dayes after bare in with Plimmouth. But I was enforced to returne backe. Having parted company with my Vice-Admirall, I went wandering alone on my voyage, sailing along the coast of Spaine, within view of Cape Finisterre and Cape St Vincent, the north and south capes of Spaine. In which space, having many chases, I could meet with none but my countreymen or countrey’s friends. Leaving these Spanish shores, I directed my course, the 14th December, towards the Isles of the Canaries. Here I lingered twelve dayes for two reasons; the one, in hope to meete my Vice-Admirall; the other, to get some vessel to remove my pestered men into, who being 140 almost in a ship of 200 tunnes, there grew many sicke. I tooke two very fine caravels under the calmes of Tenerif and Palma, which both refreshed and amended my company, and made me a fleet of three sailes.... Thus cheered as a desolate traveller, with the company of my small and newe erected Fleete, I continued my purpose for the West Indies.

“Riding under this White Cape two daies, and walking on shore to view the countrey, I found it a waste, desolate, barren and sandie place, the sand running in drifts like snow, and very stony; for so is all the countrey sand upon stone (like Arabia Deserta and Petrea), and full of blacke venemous lizards, with some wild beasts and people which be tawny Moores, so wilde, as they would but call to my caravels from the shore who road very neare it. I now caused my master Abraham Kendall to shape his course directly for the Isle of Trinidad in the West Indies; which after twenty-two dayes we descried, and the 1st Feb. came to anker under a point thereof, called Curiapan, in a bay which was very full of pelicans, and I called it Pelican Bay. About three leagues to the eastward of this place we found a mine of Mercazites, which glister like golde (but all is not golde that glistereth), for so we found the same nothing worth, though the Indians did assure us it was Calvori, which signifieth golde with them. These Indians are a fine shaped and a gentle people, all naked and painted red, their commanders wearing crowns of feathers. These people did often resort unto my ship, and brought us hennes, hogs, plantans, potatos, pines, tobacco, and many other pretie commodities, which they exchanged with us for hatchets, knives, hookes, belles and glasse buttons. The countrey is fertile, and ful of fruits, strange beasts and foules, whereof munkies, babions and parats were in great abundance.

“Right against the northernmost part of Trinidad, the maine was called the high land of Paria, the rest a very lowe land. Morucca I learned to be ful of a greenestone called Taracao, which is good for the stone. Caribes I learned to be man-eiters or canibals and great enemies to the Islanders of Trinidad. In the high land of Paria I was informed by divers of these Indians, that there was some Perota, which with them is silver, and great store of most excellent cane tobacco.... I was told of a rich nation, that sprinkled their bodies with the powder of golde, and seemed to be guilt, and that farre beyond them was a great towne called El Dorado, with many other things.... And after carefully doubling the shouldes of Abreojos, I now caused the Master (hearing by a pilote that the Spanish Fleete ment to put out of Havana) to beare for the Meridian of the yle of Bermuda, hoping there to finde the Fleete. The Fleete I found not, but foule weather enough to scatter many Fleetes which companies left me not, till I came to the yles of Flores and Cuervo; whither I made the more haste, hoping to meete some greate Fleete of Her Majestie my Sovereigne, as I had intelligence, and to give them advise of this rich Spanish Fleete; but findinge none, and my victuals almost spent, I directed my course for England.”

Here he fell in love with, and married, a sister of Thomas Cavendish, who died without children in 1596. Soon afterwards he married Alice, daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, by whom he had four daughters. His one desire after coming into possession of Kenilworth was to clear his own and his mother’s reputation and honour, and for this purpose he instituted proceedings at law to prove his legitimacy. At first in the Ecclesiastical Court he had hopes of success, but the influence of the Essexs and Sydneys proved too strong; the case was transferred to the Star Chamber, which ordered that all “depositions should be sealed up and no copies taken,” and only admitted the evidence of Lady Essex.

Irritated by such injustice Dudley left England, and with him went his beautiful young cousin Elisabeth, eldest daughter of Sir Robert Southwell. At Lyons they entered the Roman Catholic Church, obtained the Pope’s dispensation from the laws of consanguinity, and were married, Lady Alice Dudley having in vain offered to join him with their four girls and to become a Catholic.

From Lyons Sir Robert and his new wife went to Florence and Dudley wrote to the Grand Duke asking for his protection and offering his services. In quaint French he set forth his noble birth and high lineage, claimed by virtue of descent to be Duke of Northumberland, Earl of Warwick, and Earl of Leicester, and declared himself second to none in the science of navigation and the art of ship-building; he also promised to make the Grand Duke absolute master in the seas of the Levant in spite of all Spanish, infidel and other galleys.

Ferdinando II, made inquiries of Lotti, his Minister in London, about the “Conte di Varuich” before taking him into his service. After expatiating upon the “exquisite stature, fair beard and noble appearance” of Sir Robert Dudley, Lotti added that King James was very angry at his marriage and his assumption of the title of Earl of Warwick, and then writes in cipher, “the chief reason is that His Majesty does not want Catholic subjects, especially when they are brave and worthy men.” This brought the matter to a conclusion, and Dudley immediately began building ships for the Grand Duke. He wrote proudly of the galleon _San Giovanni_, “she was a rare and strong sailer, of great repute, and the terror of the Turks in these seas”; and his designs seem to have attracted notice in England, as Lotti wrote to the Grand Duke in March 1607, “H. E. (Sir Thomas Challoner, tutor to Prince Henry) showed me the design of a ship made in Leghorn by the Earl of Warwick, and he also showed me another which he said was more perfect than any.” This may account for James I, sending Dudley an order to return to England, promising him an earldom and the title of Earl of Warwick. But all offers that left his own and his mother’s name under a slur were refused by Dudley, who remained in Tuscany where, thanks to him, Leghorn became a great commercial port. He induced the Grand Duke to build fortifications, to declare it a free port and to allow an English factory to be set up. The draining of the marshes between Leghorn and Pisa was also suggested by him.

In the _Specola_, or Natural History Museum, in Florence, are three large manuscript volumes in Dudley’s writing on ship-building. The two first are in English, the third in Italian, and his orthography, to say the least, is in both languages peculiar. In the same museum is a curious instrument of his invention for finding the ebb and flow of the tides, of which I give, through the kindness of Mr Temple Leader, an engraving taken from his interesting _Life of Sir Robert Dudley_, from which most of my facts are taken.

In Florence, Dudley and his wife (mentioned by Lord Herbert of Cherbury as “the handsome _Mrs Sudel_ whom he carried away with him out of England and is here taken for his wife”) were known as Earl and Countess of Warwick, until the Emperor Ferdinand II, to please his sister the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, whose grand chamberlain Dudley was, created him Duke of Northumberland in 1620.

Dudley was undoubtedly a remarkable man. He had been carefully educated, was a brave and scientific seaman and well versed in military and naval architecture; he excelled in all knightly exercises and was cited for his courtly and polished manners. A man of letters and a good mathematician, he also busied himself with medicine and invented a powder known as _Pulvis Comitis Warvicensis_, much praised by Mario Cornacchini, professor of medicine at Pisa, who declares that “clearing the Italian seas of barbarous and evil pirates was not a greater benefit to mankind than his fighting and exterminating the evil humours which molest humanity and cause disease.”

Of Dudley’s twelve children the eldest, Maria, married the Prince of Piombino; Maria Maddalena became the wife of Malaspina Marchese d’Olivola, High Steward to Queen Christina of Sweden; and Teresa married the Duke della Cornia. Robert, the eldest son, died a few days before he attained his majority, and his mother was so affected by his loss that she followed him to the grave within a few weeks, to the intense grief of her husband. The second son, Charles, was an unmannerly scapegrace who gave his father infinite trouble. He married a Frenchwoman, Marie Madeleine, daughter of Charles Antoine Gouffier, Marquis de Braseux and Seigneur de Crevecœur. His daughter was the beautiful, witty and wild Christina Dudley married to the Marchese Paleotti of Bologna, whose adventurous and romantic life has been so well described by Signor Corrado Ricci,[48] and whose daughter Adelaide, after various adventures, turned Protestant, married the Duke of Shrewsbury, became a leader of fashion in London and Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Wales; her son Ferdinand, after giving endless annoyance to the Shrewsburys, ended his ill-spent life on the gallows. He was hung at Tyburn on March 28th, 1718, for the murder of his Italian servant, and curiously enough the Tuscan Minister present at his execution was Don Neri Corsini, whose family now own the villa where Sir Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Earl of Warwick, lived for so many years and died in Sept. 1649.

Since 1230, when the Corsini came from Poggibonsi, their name fills many a page of the history of Florence as Priors and Gonfaloniers of the city. Andrea, the beloved and revered bishop of Fiesole, left such a reputation for goodness and sanctity that he was beatified in 1440 and canonised by Urban VIII, in 1629. He restored the cathedral of his diocese and the façade we now see was built by him. His brother Neri succeeded him as bishop of Fiesole, while another brother, Matteo, went to England, where his uncle was Master of the Mint, and made a large fortune in trade. He is known as the author of interesting family records and of the _Rosaia della Vita_, often quoted in the dictionary of the Crusca as a model of pure and elegant Italian. Tommaso di Duccio, their uncle, a learned jurist and a great statesman, was one of the chief citizens of Florence in the fourteenth century, and to his prudent counsels and wise administration the Republic owed much of her prosperity and power. After long negotiations he induced the Visconti to make peace with Florence, and when this was at length signed in 1353 he withdrew from public life, entered the Order of the _Gaudenti_ (instituted for the protection of widows and orphans) and jointly with the Rossi and Manieri erected a monastery outside the Porta Romana. For himself he built a small house hard by the monastery and passed the rest of his days almost as a hermit, occupied in prayer and good works. Notwithstanding the large amount given in charity he left a very considerable fortune to his sons; the eldest, Amerigo, was bishop of Florence at the time of the Council of Constance, which put an end to the schism of the Church and elected Martino V, Pope. In order to conciliate the citizens Martino raised Florence to the rank of an archbishopric and bestowed the privilege of wearing the crimson robes of a cardinal on her archbishop.

Luca Corsini was the popular Prior of Florence who shut the door of the Palazzo della Signoria in the face of Piero de’ Medici after his cession of Pisa, Leghorn, Pietrasanta and Sarzana to Charles VIII, of France. As ardent a republican and as great an enemy of the Medici as he was a friend of Savonarola, it is related that in 1498 the grave magistrate was seen throwing stones and fighting in the streets in defence of Fra Girolamo like any young lad. A daughter of the house of Corsini, Marietta, married the celebrated Niccolò Macchiavelli and is said to be depicted in his novel _Belfegor_; this may be—but he mentions her in his will with affection and esteem. Bertholdo Corsini, who was elected a Prior of Florence in 1531 after the fall of the Republic, must have been a weak man. He paid court to Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, who made him custodian of the fortress of San Giovan Battista; but when Alessandro was murdered by his cousin Lorenzino, Corsini repented and offered to give up the arms and ammunition in the fortress to the citizens, who fearing a snare refused to listen to him. When Cosimo II, entered the city, Bertholdo fled and joined the standard of Piero Strozzi. He escaped with his life from the battle of Montemurlo and after fighting in Piedmont and in France, returned to Italy when the Siennese revolted and was appointed custodian of the castle of Sienna. In the battle of Orbetello Bertholdo was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, sold to Cosimo for 600 scudi, and beheaded on the 2nd March 1555 in the Piazza S. Apollinari.

Not many years passed before the Corsini and the Medici became partners in a great banking firm in Rome, chiefly managed by Filippo Corsini who had been created Marchese of Sismano, Casigliano and Civitella by the Grand Duke Ferdinando II. Filippo was an intimate friend of Pope Urban VIII, with whom he was connected by his marriage with Maria Macchiavelli, a considerable heiress. Their eldest son Bartolomeo, brought up at the Tuscan court, was after the death of Ferdinando made Master of the Household to his widow Vittoria della Rovere. The second son Neri was a cardinal, and his moderation, prudence and good sense was of infinite service to the Holy See on two different occasions—when Avignon and when Ferrara revolted against the priestly rule. Filippo their nephew, was the companion and friend of Cosimo, son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, and the interesting account, now in the Laurentian Library, of the Prince’s visits to Oxford, Cambridge and many towns and country houses in England, was written by him and illustrated by P. M. Baldi. A member of most of the Academies of that day, he contributed largely to the cost of publishing the fourth edition of the Della Crusca dictionary. Lorenzo, his younger brother, became a cardinal in 1706 and twenty-four years later, when seventy-eight years of age and nearly blind, was elected Pope. It is related that when hailed as Clemente XII, he knelt down and begged the Consistory to allow an old blind man to die in peace; but they insisted, and Lorenzo Corsini unwillingly accepted. His first care was to put the finances in order and to dismiss Cardinal Coscia, the venal favourite of his predecessor Benedict XIII. He reformed the administration of justice, and ordered an emission of new coinage to replace the debased currency of former Popes. The magnificent gallery of the Campidoglio was founded by him; he built the fountain of Trevi, several churches, the façades of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and of San Giovanni in Laterano, and restored the Vatican. But much of this was done with money derived from the abominable _Giuoco del Lotto_—“esterminio e ruina de’ popoli,” as the Venetian Ambassador Mocenigo calls it—which had been prohibited by Benedict XIII, and was restored by Clemente under the specious pretext that his subjects would spend their money in gambling outside the papal dominions if they were debarred from gambling at home. On his accession to the Papacy he summoned his two nephews, Bartolomeo and Neri, to Rome. The former was created Prince of Sismano, Duke of Casigliano and Captain-General of the Papal Guards. Tempted by Charles III, who held out hopes that Spain would renounce her claims on Parma and Tuscany in his favour if he aided her to secure the kingdom of Naples, he identified himself entirely with the Spanish party, only to find his ambitious plans absolutely ignored by the Congress of Vienna. As some consolation he was appointed Viceroy of Sicily in 1737 and a Grandee of Spain two years later. Neri was made a cardinal and practically ruled the Papal States not only under his uncle, who trusted him implicitly, but under three successive Popes. He built the great Corsini palace at Rome and formed magnificent collections of pictures, engravings, manuscripts and books. Intensely hostile to the Jesuits, he used all his influence to obtain the suppression of the Order, but died in 1770 before the promulgation of the decree against them.

Pope Clemente would have left a greater name had he abstained from showering gifts and honours on members of his own family. One great-great-nephew he made a Knight of Malta while still in swaddling clothes and Prior of Pisa at the age of four, in spite of the indignant protests of the Grand Master of the Order; another was domestic prelate and Apostolic pro-notary almost before he could read and a cardinal at twenty-four; while Bartolomeo, their brother, became Captain-General of the Papal Guard. His son Tommaso began life as Chamberlain to the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, but when Florence was occupied by the troops of the French Republic and “death to the aristocrats” was the popular cry, he fled to Sicily, and when he returned he found Tuscany transformed into the Kingdom of Etruria. Queen Maria Louisa made Tommaso Corsini master of her household and sent him to Bologna to receive Napoleon I, on whom he made so favourable an impression that when Tuscany was incorporated with the Empire he summoned him to Paris, made him a Senator, a Count of the Empire and a Chamberlain, in which capacity he escorted the Arch Duchess Marie Louise to France. On the fall of the Emperor Corsini returned to Italy, and was Senator of Rome during the exciting days of 1848, when the first dawn of Italian Unity was fostered for a time by Pio IX. After the Pope abandoned the popular party Corsini in vain attempted to stem the tide of republicanism; he had to fly for his life and only returned to Rome after the Papal Government had been re-established by French troops. He was a man of considerable culture and added largely to the Corsini galleries at Florence and Rome. His brother Neri was deservedly beloved in Tuscany, for he advocated her independence at the Congress of Vienna, and obtained the restitution of the art treasures which had been carried off to Paris. As Prime Minister he devoted himself to the amelioration of the condition of the people, made new roads, gave a fresh impulse to the great work of the bonification of the Val di Chiana, and, a strong free-trader, successfully withstood his retrograde colleagues who, during a period of scarcity, desired to impose a heavy tax on corn. Imbued, like all his forebears, with a great dislike and distrust of the Jesuits he resolutely set his face against their re-admittance into the country. Don Tommaso, the present representative of the princely house of Corsini, by his kindly hospitality, learning and charm of manner has endeared himself to all his fellow-citizens and worthily continues the liberal traditions of his family.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] See _Maiolica_. By C. Drury E. Fortnum. P. 76. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1896.

[48] _Una illustre Avventuriera._ Corrado Ricci. Fratelli Treves. Milano.

By NICCOLÒ FIORENTINO.

(_Villa di Castello_).]

By FRA LUCA, OR FRA AMBROGIO DELLA ROBBIA.

(_Villa di Cafeggi_).]

By NICCOLÒ FIORENTINO.

(_Villa Medici a Fiesole_).]

VILLA MEDICI A FIESOLE

“Not more than two miles distant from Florence,” writes old Varchi, “shines Fiesole, once a city, now a fruitful hill; yet is she still a city.... I say still a city, because she always had and still has, her bishop.... Of a truth the position on this charming hill is so pleasant and delightful that the fable about its having been built by Atlantus under a constellation which bestows peace of mind, repose of body and gaiety of heart seems to be true.” Another tradition says it was founded by Comero Gallo, son of Japhet, in the tenth year of the Assyrian empire; he surrounded it with great walls, built high towers and erected two castles, one to the east the other to the west, for defence; others again attribute it to Jason, brother of Dardanus; while some say Hercules of Egypt laid the first stone. Hesiod affirms that Fiesole was one of the nymphs from whom sprang the constellation of the Pleiads which forms a half moon, still the emblem of the city; “Faesulas ex una Pleaidum ferunt esse dictum,” says also Volterrano. But Dante considers all these to be old women’s tales:

“Another with her maidens, drawing off
The tresses from the distaff, lectured them
Old tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.”[49]

Borghini in his history of Fiesole cautiously remarks: “From the divers opinions of so many and such various authors I can only conclude that the city is so ancient that her history can only be guessed at, not known or discovered; and as she is beyond all memory so is she beyond all other cities in renown. The more mysterious her origin, the more attractive she is.”

Vasari tells us that Michelozzo Michelozzi built for Giovanni, son of Cosimo de’ Medici, a “magnificent and noble palace at Fiesole; the foundations of the lower part on the steep slope of the hill cost an enormous sum, but it was not thrown away, as there he made vaults, cellars, stables, places for the making of wine and oil, and other good and commodious habitations; and above them, besides the bed-chambers, drawing-rooms and other apartments, he arranged rooms for containing books and for music: in short Michelozzo showed in this edifice how valiant an architect he was, for it was so well built that although high up on that hill, no crack has ever started.”

Here, beneath the Etruscan city of Fiesole, with all Florence in the valley far below, Lorenzo the Magnificent passed his happiest hours in the company of Landino, Scala, Ficino, Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola and other literary friends, at one moment discussing Plato, at another writing sonnets and songs in idiomatic Tuscan. A true Florentine in his love of the country, his poetry abounds in descriptions of woods and rivers, of the song of birds and the joys of the chase. The following sonnet on the violet will show how well he merited the praise bestowed on his poetry by his contemporaries.

“Not from bright cultured gardens, where sweet airs
Steal softly round the rose’s terraced home,
Into thy white hand Lady have we come;
Deep in dark dingles are our wild-wood lairs.
Here once came Venus racked with aching cares,
Seeking Adonis through our leafy gloam:
Hither and thither vainly doth she roam,
Till her bare foot a felon bramble tears.
To catch the sacred blood that from above
Dripped off the leaves, our small white flowers we spread:
Whence came that purple hue which now is ours.
Not summer airs, nor rills from far springs led
Have nursed our beauty; but by tears of love
Our roots were watered; love-sighs fanned our flowers.”[50]

The villa at Fiesole was nigh being the scene of a double murder, when, as Roscoe writes, “a pope, a cardinal, an archbishop, and several other ecclesiastics associated themselves with a band of ruffians to destroy two men who were an honour to their age and country; and purposed to perpetrate their crime at a season of hospitality....” The two men were Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, one of the best of the Medici; the conspirators were Sixtus IV, and his nephew Girolamo Riario, Francesco de’ Pazzi, whom jealousy of the Medici had led to settle at Rome, his uncle Jacopo de’ Pazzi, a gambler and a libertine, and all his ten nephews save two; Gugliemo, married to Lorenzo’s sister Bianca before their father’s death, and Renato, a man of letters. The Pope’s chief agent was the archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, a man of notoriously bad character, whose preferment to the see of Pisa Lorenzo had strenuously opposed, seconded by his brother Jacopo Salviati and by the son of Poggio Bracciolini the great scholar. Jacopo Poggio was of some repute in the world of letters and dedicated a commentary on Petrarch’s _Trionfo della Fama_ to Lorenzo. “I am aware,” he writes, “that what little I know is due to the help and valiant encouragement given to me in my youth by Cosimo thy grandfather.... I consider myself obliged and constrained out of gratitude to dedicate unto thee, his true and worthy heir, whatever fruit is born of his grave and weighty admonitions and exhortations; as a recognition that whatever virtues I possess derive from thy house.” The underlings were Bernardo Bandini, a man of ill-fame, Giovan Battista Montesicco, a condottiere engaged in the service of the Pope, Antonio Maffei, a priest from Volterra and Stefano da Bagnone, an apostolic scribe.