Florentine villas

The hamlet of Lappeggi lies some six miles south-east of Florence in the picturesque valley of the Ema, and here the Ricasoli had a villa which in 1569 they sold to Francesco de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I. Francesco I was succeeded by his brother Ferdinando I, who, in order to avoid any controversy with Don Antonio de’ Medici, the supposed illegitimate son of the Grand Duke Francesco and Bianca Cappello,⁠[32] gave him a life interest in a considerable share of the family property, Lappeggi among the rest. On the death of Don Antonio in 1604 the Grand Duke again came into possession and bestowed it on the Orsini family. Alessandro, last of the Orsini, died about thirty years later, and once more Lappeggi reverted to the crown when Don Mattias de’ Medici had it for his life, but seldom lived there, as he was governor of Siena. Finally the villa became the property of Cardinal Francesco Maria de’ Medici, whose favourite place of residence it was.

Antonio Ferri, the court architect, was then ordered to prepare designs for a villa, and choosing the most magnificent the Cardinal asked what the cost would be; after a few moments of reflection Ferri answered forty thousand scudi for solid good building. “And if I only desire to spend thirty thousand, and yet have my villa built according to this design, how long would it last?” said the Cardinal. On the architect replying that he would guarantee it for eighteen years, the Cardinal exclaimed, “Eighteen years? That is enough; that will serve my time.”

Lappeggi is celebrated in the Rime Piacevole of Giovan Battista Fagiuoli, a poet who was one of the chief boon companions of the pleasure-loving Cardinal, and seems to have been consulted as to the planting of the grounds. He strongly recommended bay trees: “they are evergreen, but not funereal like cypresses, so noble that kings make crowns of their leaves; and above all they avert thunderbolts, which are frequent at Lappeggi. But,” he continues in his facetious poem, “plant what you will, everyone is sure to praise your work, for a Prince can do no wrong. Should he by chance commit some gross error, liars and courtiers will make it out a miracle; so that if you plant a pumpkin to-morrow they will all exclaim, ‘What a beautiful outlandish fruit.’ Or if you sow a bean—a common enough thing—you will hear, ‘What a glorious plant, what a show it makes, what taste the Cardinal has.’”

Francesco Maria de’ Medici was very fond of practical jokes. Once he saw an ass go pass the villa with her foal, and calling his French cook Monsù Niccolò and his two aids bade them buy the foal and serve it dressed in various ways at dinner. After the guests had eaten their fill, particularly of an excellent pasty, the bleeding legs and head of the little donkey with the hair on, were solemnly placed on the centre of the table. Some of the party had to leave the room, but most of them praised the good dinner and laughed, or pretended to laugh, at the Cardinal’s wonderful wit. Fagiuoli writes a long description of the scene in verse, saying that for his part, he preferred the long ears. He also describes the game of pallone, in high favour at Lappeggi, and various games of cards over which large sums of money were lost. Comedies written by him were learned and acted by the courtiers within six hours, in obedience to a master whose every whim had to be gratified at once. On the Cardinal’s birthday there was a fair on the sward near the villa; all Florence, and the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages, flocked to see the fun and danced till late in the night. Marionettes, musicians, astrologers, conjurors “who,” says our satirical poet, “did not much astonish me, because the talent of changing cards by sleight of hand is by no means uncommon in these days.”

There were great doings at Lappeggi in 1709; Frederick IV, King of Denmark,⁠[33] was in Florence, and the Cardinal de’ Medici begged him to honour his villa with his presence, and asked ten ladies of the aristocracy, chosen for their knowledge of French, to meet him. Prince Giovan Gastone waited betimes upon the King with all the court dignitaries to accompany him to his uncle’s villa where the ladies received His Majesty at the door with much reverence and courtesying, and at dinner they and Prince Giovan Gastone sat at the King’s table and were served by the pages of the court; the Cardinal having a bad fit of the gout being unable to do the honours himself. The dinner consisted of four complete changes: one cloth after another was removed and towards the end came a course of sweet dishes of various kinds; after these had been tasted, sugar-plums disposed in pyramids and many kinds of liqueur were placed on the table. In front of the King was put a large coffee-pot in the shape of a fountain with four jets, and at the sides of the table were four golden dishes, two containing three cups of chocolate each, the others cups of water. Between the golden dishes the space was covered with Savoy and other biscuits, and when the coffee-pot was removed, “trionfi” of bottles of San Lorenzo and other rare wines took its place, and all the glasses used were of the finest engraved Bohemian glass. During dinner there was a concert, and the same musicians followed the King about during the whole day, and managed so well as to be ready to receive him with dulcet tunes at every halting-place. After the banquet the King withdrew with the ladies and cavaliers into another room and played games until four o’clock, when they drove about the grounds and visited the home farm. Then going into the orange garden they found a sumptuous cold repast, preparations of milk, capons in jelly, iced fruit and sweetmeats of divers kinds. The iced fruit, a dish new to the King and to all his people, delighted them so much that His Majesty asked permission to make a present of a dish to his dwarf, who was of noble birth and a great favourite and trusted counsellor. On a table apart stood small flasks of the most costly Tuscan wines, chiefly those made on the surrounding hills praised so highly by Redi in his Bacco in Toscana. The King and all the company sat down and ate heartily of the good things, and then, to crown so royal a day, it was proposed to dance; the King set the example, but as night was approaching and dew began to fall it was considered prudent to retreat indoors. More liberty and jollity being permitted in the country than in town, French dances were abandoned and peasant dances, such as the Spalmata, the Mestola and the Scarpettaccia were indulged in, to the great satisfaction and delight of His Majesty. Thus they amused themselves until three in the morning, when all returned to Florence.”⁠[34]

In July of the same year the Cardinal was, for family reasons, induced to obtain dispensation from Holy Orders and marry the Princess Eleonora Gonzaga of Guastalla, twenty-five years his junior, and the bachelor amusements at Lappeggi came to an end. The young Princess openly manifested her dislike and contempt for her worn-out, gouty and corpulent husband, and he, they say, took this so much to heart that he died after only eight months of married life.

Lappeggi was then abandoned and shut up for four years when Cosimo III lent it to Princess Violante of Bavaria, widow of his eldest son. She loved the society of literary men and poets and had a particular admiration for improvisatori. Cavaliere Bernadino of Siena, famous for his talent in improvising, often visited her at Lappeggi, where he met the burlesque poet Ghivizzani, and a peasant girl who lived near by called Domenica Maria Mazzetti, surnamed la Menica di Legnaja, who had a great reputation for improvising in “terza rima.” So delighted was Princess Violante with the girl’s talent that she had her taught reading, writing, Latin and music, all which she learnt with ease. After the death of Cosimo, Princess Violante had to give up Lappeggi and went to live in Rome; she took the peasant girl with her and caused her to be crowned with bays on the Campidoglio.

In 1816 Lappeggi was sold by public auction to Signor Capacci; he soon resold it to Captain Cambiagi, who was obliged to take down the second story, which was causing the walls to bulge and threatened to destroy the whole house, and at his death the Gheradesca family bought it and turned the royal villa into a lodging-house for poor people. In 1876 it came into the possession of the well-known sculptor Giovanni Dupré, whose daughter, also a sculptress, still owns it. In May 1895 the villa, like so many in the neighbourhood of Florence, suffered severely from an earthquake; but time, neglect and earthquakes have been unable to quite destroy the beauty of the place, and as we stand on the wide broad terrace in front of the villa looking out across the valley of the Chianti towards Siena, the talent of Antonio Ferri the architect is realised, who so happily placed the villa of Lappeggi and its gardens in sight of so fine a scene. The lines of the balustrade, projecting above the garden in a bold half circle, are seen against the hills where they slope down towards the valley, thus forming a scene as austerely beautiful as a drawing by some great Tuscan Master. A wide staircase leads swiftly down on either side of the terrace to the lower level of the garden, which is raised above the vineyards by strong bastions and confined by a low rampart wall. The outline of the beds remain as in Zocchi’s print, but where the pleasure-loving Cardinal once walked with a gay company of Florentines among the brightness of his flowers now are seen only artichokes and potatoes, and the statues and vases are no longer standing to recall the pageantry of those days. At the top of the garden a big grotto has been scooped out beneath the upper terrace, which Francesco Maria, no doubt remembering for a brief moment his title of Cardinal, caused to be ornamented with terra-cotta bas-reliefs illustrating such scenes as Moses before the burning bush, while a huge statue of St Mark with his lion seated above a pool of water, might easily be mistaken by a casual observer for a Neptune rising from the sea with his dolphin.

From the loggia of the house one enters a finely proportioned room, decorated with charming frescoes of landscapes seen through arches, where pheasants strut on terraced walks, while a statue of Venus looks down upon a lake, all faintly painted and with a dim distance which gives to the room that great idea of space which the Italians of the eighteenth century so well knew how to render. We sat here one rainy day reading of the gay doings of Cardinal Francesco Maria, and as we saw the rents in the walls made by the earthquake, and recalled the bargain between the Cardinal and his architect, we wondered that the villa should have stood so long.⁠[35]