Florence

by Christopher Hibbert

  These gardens, which stretched south to the heights of San Giorgio and almost as far west as the Porta Romana, had been bought from several families, including the Bogoli, and it was by a corrupt form of their name, Boboli, that the gardens were henceforth to be known. Within a few months of the Duchess's purchase of the Pitti Palace, Tribolo was employed as landscape architect and, after his death in 1550, the work was carried on by Ammannati, Giulio and Alfonso Parigi, and by Baccio Bandinelli, who designed an elaborate rustic grotto here, the Grotticina di Madama, at the Duchess's suggestion.10

  By the time this grotto was finished, the Duchess was in failing health, losing her interest in splendid clothes and jewellery in which she had formerly delighted, suffering, so the Venetian ambassador reported, from a chronic cough, ‘and every morning bringing up her food’. She died in her husband's arms, ‘grieving and despairing, refusing to be guided by physicians as was her wont’.

  The Duke, already deeply distressed by the death of two young sons and of his favourite daughter, was inconsolable. He tried to overcome his grief by hunting more vigorously than ever and by eating huge meals, his plate piled high with onions and garlic. He shut himself away, refusing to be comforted, eventually taking a young mistress, by whom he had a son, then marrying another young woman whom he soon found to be as ill-tempered as she was demanding. He escaped from her company as often as he could, to spend evenings with his one surviving daughter at the Medici Palace. One evening he had an apoplectic fit there, and died, worn out at fifty-five, on 21 April 1574, having long since delegated most of his duties to his eldest son and heir, Francesco.

  17

  PAGEANTS AND PLEASURES 1560–1765

  ‘I live in Florence in an excellent coole terrene, eate good melons, drink wholsome wines, look upon excellent devout pictures, heer choyse musique.’

  SIR TOBIE MATTHEW

  Soon after his arrival in Florence, Duke Cosimo had begun to consider the possibility of housing the city's scattered judicial and administrative offices, as well as the headquarters of its leading guilds, under one roof close to the Palazzo della Signoria where he could keep a close watch on their activities.

  He had it in mind to erect a magnificent building. The Palazzo had already been remodelled and the piazza, now known as the Piazza del Granduca, repaved; the Mercato Nuovo, popularly known as the Porcellino, had been completed to the design of Giovanni Battista del Tasso in 1551;1 and much new building had been carried out in the suburbs and along the river front. Encouraged by Cosimo, several richer families, the Strozzi, the Uguccioni2 and the Ricasoli among them, had improved or reconstructed their palaces; and several new palaces had appeared on the Oltrarno in Via Maggio.3

  For his new offices, Duke Cosimo considered the most suitable site to be a long strip of land which ran down to the Arno from the Palazzo. It was, of course, covered with buildings already: the city's old mint stood on part of the site;4 so did the church of San Pier Scheraggio, then one of the largest churches in Florence;5 also here were several houses belonging to the Arte della Seta and many smaller dwellings in private hands. But nothing was to be allowed to stand in the way of the Duke's new offices. Objections that the sandy nature of the soil would present intractable problems in the construction of so large a building were brushed aside: iron would have to be used extensively as a reinforcement. The architect chosen to design the Uffizi, as the long U-shaped building came to be known, was Giorgio Vasari, the first edition of whose celebrated work, Le vite dei più eccellenti

  A self-portrait by Giorgio Vasari (1511–74), biographer and architect of the Uffizi, where this picture hangs.

  pittori, scultori ed architetti italiani, had been published ten years before in 1550.6

  A native of the Tuscan town of Arezzo, where his father was in a modest way of business, Giorgio had been sent as a boy to Florence to study with Michelangelo and later with Andrea del Sarto and Baccio Bandinelli. He had found a patron in Duke Alessandro de' Medici, and, after the Duke's assassination, he had left Florence to work successfully for other patrons elsewhere. Returning to Florence in 1555 he had soon established himself as Duke Cosimo's artistic adviser, the busy impresario of ducal ceremonies and entertainments, director of a large school of assistants, one of the founders of the Accademia del Disegno,7 and creator or supervisor of a large body of work in Florence, much of it uninspired. He was responsible for the remodelling of the interiors of the church of Ognissanti and of Santa Croce, where he designed the tomb of his hero, Michelangelo.8 He worked on the decoration of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore and on several of the enormous fresco cycles in the Palazzo della Signoria, where he designed the Studiolo di Francesco I for Duke Cosimo's son and heir.9 And it was for Francesco's bride, the Archduchess Joanna of Austria, sister of the Emperor Maximilian II, that he supervised the decoration of the cortile of the Palazzo della Signoria, himself painting some of the views of Austrian cities in the lunettes. He also designed the fountain in the centre of the courtyard, and made the copy of Verrocchio's delightful putto holding a dolphin, the original of which was brought down to the palace from the Medici villa at Careggi.

  Anxious as her father-in-law had been to make her feel at home, and spectacular as were the pageants and entertainments given to celebrate her marriage to Francesco, Joanna, longing for Austria and feeling unwell, never settled down in Florence, where the people condemned her for what they took to be her gloomy hauteur and her husband virtually ignored her, spending as much time as he could with his mistress, Bianca Cappello, a most attractive Venetian woman for whom he built the charming Villa Pratolino which so impressed Montaigne,10 and to whose complaisant husband he gave a lucrative court appointment as well as a palazzo in Via Maggio.11 ‘According to the Italians [Bianca Cappello] is beautiful,’ commented Montaigne, who was invited to dinner in November 1580. ‘She has an agreeable and imposing face, and large breasts, the way they like them here. She certainly seems capable of having bewitched [the Grand Duke] and of being able to maintain his devotion.’

  Francesco was a taciturn man, graceless and parsimonious, as withdrawn as his father, though with none of his father's commanding presence. He was of ‘low stature,’ the Venetian ambassador reported, ‘thin, dark-complexioned and of a melancholy disposition’.

  Florentines, however, had cause to be grateful to him. Their Duke since the death of Cosimo in 1574 – and Grand Duke since 1576 by imperial proclamation – he succeeded in keeping Tuscany out of the wars then raging in Europe and, while spending lavishly upon his own interests and pleasures, was generous in his benefactions to the state. He founded the Accademia della Crusca which, dedicated to the study of the Italian language and to the compilation of a Tuscan dictionary, still occupies premises in the Medici Villa di Castello.12 On the third floor of the Uffizi – which had been completed by Bernardo Buontalenti and Alfonso Parigi after Vasari's death – he created an art gallery, established studios for young artists and workshops for craftsmen, and commissioned from Buontalenti the splendid octagonal Tribuna for the display of treasures from the Medici collections, among them later the Medici Venus, formerly in the Villa Medici in Rome,13 and a magnificent table in pietre dure, a craft in which Francesco took exceptional interest.14

  Indeed, the Grand Duke Francesco appeared to take more interest in gem-setting and crystal-cutting, in chemistry and alchemy, in glass-blowing and the manufacture of fireworks, in imitation jewellery and porcelain, in feeding his pet reindeer and potting his exotic plants than he did in the process of government. Towards the end of his life he held meetings of his ministers in the laboratory which Vasari had built for him in the Palazzo della Signoria, rather than interrupt his experiments.

  His brother, Ferdinando I, who succeeded him in 1587, was far more affable and gregarious than Francesco, more deeply concerned with affairs of state and the well-being of the Florentine citizens, with whom he became the most popular of the later Medici. He promoted commerce and agriculture; he founded hospitals; in a
n annual and enjoyable ceremony at San Lorenzo he distributed dowries to poor girls who might otherwise have had difficulty in finding husbands; and, after a disastrous flood in 1589, he personally presented baskets of food to the victims of the catastrophe, making a dangerous journey in a small boat to riverside villages to bring promises of help to the stricken inhabitants.

  Appointed a cardinal at the age of fourteen, he had renounced the purple in order to succeed to the grand dukedom, and in 1589 had married Catherine de' Medici's plain though agreeable granddaughter, Christine of Lorraine, welcoming her to Florence with a splendour of pageantry to emphasize the reversal of the pro-Spanish policies of a brother whom he had much disliked.

  For days on end architects and sculptors, painters and carpenters had been at work on the construction and decoration of a series of magnificent triumphal arches through which the French bride was to pass. Hundreds of other artists and craftsmen, mechanics, rope-makers and pyrotechnists had been busy preparing all manner of scenic devices for the performances to be held in the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens: exploding volcanoes and streams of devils emerging from hell, dragons breathing fire and clouds carrying flights of angels to heaven. Cooks had been planning banquets, musicians, dancers and actors rehearsing ballets, plays and productions of the new dramma per musica. Niccolò Gaddi had been placed in charge of le invenzioni, Piero Angelio de Barga appointed to write appropriate verses. Alessandro Allori was one of many painters whose talents had been employed upon the creation of huge canvases.

  The first triumphal arch was adorned with statuary and with immense paintings celebrating the heroic and largely fanciful early history of Florence; the second paid homage to the greatness of the Medici and of the French royal family, a vast picture of Catherine de' Medici presiding over all like a goddess of fertility. Other arches proclaimed the virtues of various members of the House of Medici and of the Houses of Lorraine and Valois, paid tribute to Florentine victories on land and sea, and to the triumph of Lepanto, glorified Tuscany and the Grand Dukes who had restored her to the ancient purity of monarchical rule, and, above all, glorified the Florence of the Medici, ‘its coming to honour and greatness,’ in the words of Niccoló Gaddi, ‘its coming to its supreme height, and to a royal state’.

  ‘In this way,’ Sir Roy Strong commented,

  by means of allegorical tableaux and subtle juxtaposition of historical personages, the Medici family, who less than a hundred years before had been one of many rich mercantile families within Florence, was presented as the heirs of ancient kings, as the equals of the house of Valois, as the preordained saviours of Florence, whose republican period was now viewed as an imperfection and prelude to the perfect rule of Medici autocracy.

  For three weeks the celebrations continued. There were fêtes and intermezzi, concerts by musicians of the grand-ducal chapel, firework displays, river pageants and exhibitions of animal baiting. There were games of football in the courtyard of the Pitti Palace, which was afterwards flooded to a depth of five feet for representations of naval battles; and there were astonishing spectacles in the Boboli Gardens where, for one production alone, over fifty tailors were employed in the making of 286 elaborate costumes.

  Celebrations as lavish and exotic as these also attended the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinand's niece, Maria, to Henry of Navarre, whose triumph over the Catholic League, and accession to the French throne as Henry IV, owed much to Medici money. Again there were processions and pageants, firework displays and water fêtes. Bonfires burned in the piazzas; the bells rang; cannon thundered from the fortresses; and in the square before the Palazzo Pitti fountains spurted wine. There were performances at the theatre in the Uffizi where there were marvellously inventive productions of Giulio Caccini's Il rapimento di Cefalo, with settings by Buontalenti, and of L'Euridice by Jacopo Peri, whose now lost Daphne has been called the first opera. On the day of the marriage, 5 October 1600, a stupendous banquet was given in the Palazzo Vecchio, where each extravagantly decorated dish formed part of a fantastic allegory on the martial brilliance of the French King and the outstanding virtues of the Medici family into which he had so wisely and auspiciously married.

  The Grand Duke Ferdinando also lavished money on less ephemeral delights. He made many improvements at the Pitti Palace and in the Boboli Gardens, enlarged the Uffizi and augmented its collection; he brought many of the classical statues he had collected in Rome to Florence, six of them (of Roman women) being placed inside the Loggia dei Lanzi. He bought numerous manuscripts for the Medici library; he continued his father's patronage of Giambologna, whose last work was the equestrian statue in the Piazza Santissima Annunziata;15 and installed the sculptor in the Palazzo Bellini in Borgo Pinti, where the Grand Duke's bust was placed over the door.16 He commissioned Buontalenti to construct the Forte di Belvedere, the great fortress overlooking the city on the heights of San Giorgio,17 and he spent an enormous sum on a huge and highly intricate gilded sphere which is now in the Palazzo dei Giudici with several other globes, astrolabes and clocks, Michelangelo's compasses and Galileo's instruments.18

  At the time of the Grand Duke Ferdinando's marriage to Christine of Lorraine, Galileo Galilei was twenty-five years old. He had been born in Pisa in 1564, the son of a musician, the descendant of a noble Florentine family. Entering the University of Pisa as a medical student after an early education at the monastery of Vallombrosa near Florence, he had soon abandoned medicine for mathematics and physics, but had been withdrawn from the university before taking a degree because his father could no longer afford the fees. For a time he supported himself by giving lectures in Florence; but he had so exasperated his colleagues and superiors by his constant questioning of their assertions, his irritating presumption, his sarcasm and quick temper, that he was not expected to rise far in the academic world. Even so he became a professor at Pisa, and in 1592, by then well known for various revolutionary scientific treatises, he was given a chair at Padua. Some years later he demonstrated his telescope at Rome. By then, however, he had offended and alarmed the ecclesiastical authorities, as well as his less enlightened colleagues, by his defence of Copernican theory in contradiction of the Scriptures and by his ability to expound his theories in clear, concise Italian understandable by all intelligent men. It was at this stage in his career that he was invited by Ferdinando's son, Cosimo, who had once been a pupil of his at Padua, to come to Florence as ‘First Philosopher and Mathematician’ to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Grateful for this opportunity to continue his studies and experiments under the Grand Duke's protection, Galileo moved, as the Medici's guest, to a house in Bellosguardo near Florence and, having discovered the satellites of Jupiter, repaid his patron's kindness by naming them Sidera Medicea. Intermittently in trouble with the Church thereafter, he was summoned to Rome to answer charges formulated by the Inquisition, the Jesuits having insisted that his theories would have worse consequences for the Church than ‘Luther and Calvin put together’. Found guilty, his sentence was commuted by the Pope and in 1633 he was allowed to return under house arrest to Tuscany. Here he spent the last eight years of his life on a small estate at Arcetri, where he may have received a visit from John Milton, who spent two months in Florence in 1638. On his death, the Church forbade any memorial being erected to Galileo's memory; but the Medici arranged for him to be buried in the Novices' Chapel at Santa Croce, the church which is the burying place of so many of Florence's most distinguished citizens, Ghiberti, Michelangelo and Machiavelli among them.19

  The Grand Duke Ferdinando I had long since died when Galileo was buried. So too had his son, Cosimo II, whose short reign was marked by little of importance or interest other than his kindness to Galileo, his final closure of the Medici bank as a commercial enterprise no longer appropriate to grand-ducal rank, and the celebrations held to mark his marriage to the Archduchess Maria Maddalena, the highlight of which was an astonishing performance of the Argonautica given on the Arno and involving galleys, giant dolphins, fire-spi
tting hydra and tempestuous seas.

  Cosimo's son, Ferdinando II, who entered upon his inheritance in 1621, was as indolent and placatory as his father, anxious to please everyone and to offend no one, declining, for example, to advance his claim to Urbino on the abdication of the childless Duke Francesco Maria II, and allowing the duchy to become part of the Papal States. His portrait by the Flemish-born court painter, Justus Sustermans, shows him in an unconvincingly commanding pose, gazing from the canvas through soft and heavy-lidded eyes, with full Habsburg red lips beneath a bulbous nose and a theatrical black moustache, waxed and curled. He was rather fat and most good-natured, fond of hunting, fishing and playing bowls – provided he was allowed to win – and more attracted to the young men about his court than to his wife, Vittoria della Rovere, a prim and interfering woman, who, having come upon him fondling a page, precipitated a quarrel that was to last intermittently for years.

  Her portrait by Carlo Dolci is of an exceptionally plain woman, at once disdainful and wary, a cross on her breast, a prayer-book between plump fingers. One of the main disagreements between them was about the education of their eldest son, who was to succeed his father as Cosimo III in 1670. The father would have liked him to be given a modern education with due attention paid to the scientific discoveries of which the Medici were now traditional patrons; his mother insisted that he be taught by priests in the old-fashioned way. As was to be expected, the Grand Duchess's views prevailed, with sad results for Florence.

  The Grand Duchess, regarded as a busybody and an interloper with an unseemly reverence for the Holy See, was never liked in Florence; but her husband was too easy-going and good-humoured to be unpopular. The people approved of the unpretentious way he had wicker-covered bottles

  A bust in pietre dure of Vittoria della Rovere, wife of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II; she died in 1693 at the age of seventy-two. This work, now in the Conservatorio della Quiete, is by Giuseppe Antonio Torricelli, who described it as ‘the first life-sized hardstone portrait ever made’.