PREFACE
Visitors to Florence are more or less intimately acquainted with the history of her churches, galleries and palaces, but there are few books dealing with the villas which crown the hills surrounding the lovely city. For years friends have asked me to write some account of them and the first beginning was made in an article in the National Review (May 1894) called “A stroll in Boccaccio’s country,” dealing chiefly with the two villas described by him in the Decameron in language of matchless grace and charm. Becoming interested in the subject I collected what information I could about the Florentine Villas and the families to whom they had belonged, and coming across Guiseppe Zocchi’s rare work Vedute delle Ville e d’altri luoghi della Toscana published in 1744, it was thought that reproductions of his beautiful etchings would enhance the interest of my book. Zocchi, about whom but little is known, was born near Florence in 1711 and died in 1767. Frescoes were executed by him in the Serristori and Rinuccini palaces and he was commissioned by the people of Siena to decorate their city with painted tapestries and hangings for a visit of Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany. This he probably owed to his patron the Marquis Gerini to whom the volume of engravings of the Villas was dedicated.
In early times the great Florentine families lived in their strong castles like robber chieftains, waging incessant war on each other and on the adjacent villages and towns, and when later they went to dwell in the walled city they built their palaces like strongholds. High towers and thick walls defended Guelf against Ghibelline, and as one party or the other obtained supremacy the beaten rivals were driven to seek refuge in their hill-castles. “The nobles,” writes Macchiavelli, “were divided against each other and the people against the nobles.... And from these divisions resulted so many deaths, so many banishments, so many destructions of families, as never befell in any other city.”
Life became more luxurious under the Medici; famous Master Builders, such as Michelozzi, Ammannati and Buontalenti were charged by the rich Florentines to design, or to enlarge and beautify, the villas which are still the pride and glory of Florence. In the country houses of the Medici, artists, poets and learned men met together and discussed literary subjects with their princely hosts; others were used, much as is the custom now, for summer retreats when the dust and heat of the town made life irksome. The “villegiatura” still plays an important part in the life of an Italian. The head of the family, his sons, their wives and children, install themselves in the huge villas, and even those who can afford to cross the Alps, hurry back to their country places in September for the vintage—always a time of merriment—when music and dancing recall the gaiety of olden days.
My work has been rendered pleasant by the kindness and courtesy of the owners of the Villas described in these pages, and I have to thank H. E. Prince Corsini for much valuable information, and for obtaining permission from the Società Colombaria, of which he is the President, to have the interesting and hitherto almost unknown deathmask of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in their possession, photographed for my book. To Cavaliere Angelo Bruschi, Librarian of the Marucelliana library, I am indebted for unceasing kindness in suggesting and obtaining for me rare pamphlets and manuscripts which illustrated the manners and customs of bygone times. My thanks are also due to Mr Temple Leader for allowing me to use the illustration out of his book, of Sir Robert Dudley’s curious instrument for the measurement of tides; to my kind friend Dr E. Percival Wright for reading the proof-sheets; to my niece Lina Duff Gordon for visiting and describing some of the more distant villas to which I was unable to go; to Colonel Goff for his drawing of Countess Rasponi’s beautiful villa Font’ all ’Erta; to Miss Erichsen whose charming drawings of the villas and gardens as they now appear add so much to the beauty and interest of the book, and lastly to the Dowager Countess of Crawford for lending me Zocchi’s volume of etchings for reproduction.
JANET ROSS.
Poggio Gherardo,
Florence.