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.
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.