Florentine villas

Monte Guffone was built at a time when castles and watch-towers were needed on the Tuscan hills, and the Acciajuoli, rivals of the Peruzzi and Bardi, determined to have a fortress-villa that should be a visible sign of their power and magnificence. The site chosen for it was the hilly country near San Casciano, between the river Pesa and the streamlet Virginio, a little off the high road to Volterra, commanding a varied landscape of vast woods of pine and oak, farms surrounded by olive-groves and vineyards, and hill-set villages with winding roads overhung with rosemary bushes. The first glimpse of Monte Guffone seen across the misty waves of olives is of a grand and shapely massed group of building, resting like a citadel on the shoulder of the hills. From its midst rises a tall tower closely resembling that of Palazzo Vecchio—with the difference that it starts straight from the ground. Upon nearing the villa there is a delightful sense of variety, as successive generations of the Acciajuoli have given it a different character until finally it has become a beautiful but somewhat baroque seventeenth century villa. Still, when walking on the broad balcony which probably covers the ancient bastions, there is the feeling of a great house built for defence, and the tower has been left untouched in a courtyard into which look large Michelangelesque windows framed with dark stone and set at regular intervals one from another, forming a perfect piece of work of its kind, and contrasting pleasantly with the mediæval watch-tower. On the northern side of the villa a façade has been added giving it almost an ecclesiastical appearance, enhanced by the group of sedate and sombre cypresses and ilexes growing at one corner of this otherwise joyous looking building. To the same period belongs the grand stone staircase on the garden side, leading down to a grotto encrusted with shells and ornamented with statues of the seasons, which even in their present shattered condition recall the past almost Medicean splendour of the place. The wall slopes out with spreading bastions forming an entrance to the grotto as though the architect had remembered the gateway of some Etruscan city, and above the arch is set a shield, supported by cupids, with the lions of the Acciajuoli house.

This once magnificent villa, now let out in tenements to poor people, was built, or at all events enlarged, early in the fourteenth century by the Grand Seneschal Acciajuoli, whose family first appears in Florentine history in the thirteenth century as merchants, rivalling, if they did not surpass, the Bardi and the Peruzzi in wealth. One of them, Niccola, stands gibbeted to all time by Dante. He and Baldo d’Aguglione, aided by the Podestà, tore out a sheet of the public records of the city in order to destroy the proof of certain frauds committed. Ironically Dante refers to the “well-guided city,” praising the old days—

Unlike the present Florentines, who are never happy away from the shadow of their Duomo, the Acciajuoli thought nothing of going to far distant lands or of taking service with foreign princes. Thus Dardano, son of Lotteringo, passed most of his youth at Tunis as treasurer to the Bey. In 1305 he was back in Florence leading his fellow-citizens against Pistoja, and soon afterwards went as ambassador to Naples to offer the Lordship of Florence to the King, Robert of Anjou; two years later he returned there to beg assistance against Uguccione della Faggiuola who threatened to make himself master of the city. A cousin of his, Niccola Acciajuoli, left Florence for Naples at the age of twenty-one to negotiate a loan, and by his extraordinary personal beauty, grace and intelligence, won the heart of Catherine, titular Empress of Constantinople, widow of the Prince of Taranto; her brother-in-law the King, who recognised his capacity and diplomatic talents, appointed him the guardian of her three children. In 1338 Niccola accompanied Louis, the eldest of his wards, to Achaia in Greece, and for three years conducted the war against the Turks with great ability; but the death of King Robert, who left the kingdom of Naples to his niece Joan, proved the stepping-stone to his fortune. Married against her will to Andrew of Hungary, a coarse, uneducated man entirely under the dominion of his rude Hungarian followers, Joan had fallen passionately in love with her cousin Louis, Prince of Taranto; and when Andrew was strangled whilst asleep popular rumour connected Acciajuoli with the murder; the Queen married her cousin Louis, and Niccola became the trusted minister of the crown. The King of Hungary soon appeared on the scene to avenge the death of his brother, and finding he was too powerful to be opposed Acciajuoli persuaded Queen Joan and her young husband to take refuge in his splendid villa Monte Guffone near Florence. After passing some weeks with him they went to Avignon to implore the aid of Pope Clement VI, but the plague, which broke out in Naples soon afterwards, proved a more efficient ally; the King of Hungary fled from the stricken city and Niccola conducted Louis and Joan back to Naples where they were received with great demonstrations of delight. He was created Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom, Count of Melfi, etc., etc., and placing himself at the head of the army drove the Hungarians back to their own country. Peace was finally made through the intervention of the Pope, and then Acciajuoli set himself to free Sicily of the Spaniards; but during his absence the King was turned against him by the Neapolitan courtiers, and in dudgeon he threw up all his appointments and retired into private life. When, however, the Pope laid the kingdom under an interdict on account of unpaid taxes, he at once offered himself as mediator. Innocent VI, received him with extraordinary honours; raised the interdict at his request, gave him the Golden Rose (the first time a private person had been thus distinguished), named him a Senator of Rome, Count of the Campagna and Rector of the ecclesiastical Patrimony, and then sent him to Milan as envoy to Bernabo Visconti to obtain the restitution of Bologna. Finding diplomacy of no avail, Niccola put himself with the Papal Legate at the head of the papal troops and soon entered Bologna in triumph. Returning to Naples he lived in almost royal state until his death at the early age of fifty-six.

Besides Monte Guffone, Niccola Acciajuoli built the magnificent Certosa near Florence after the design of Orcagna, and the first of the family to be buried there was his handsome, brilliant son Lorenzo, “a Knight and a great Baron” Matteo Villani calls him in his description of the funeral. The body was sent from Naples and on the 7th April 1354 was taken “on a knightly hearse, one great charger being in front and one behind covered with silken housings emblazoned with the Acciajuoli arms, while the hearse was covered with rich hangings and a baldaquin of silk and gold, and over the coffin was fine crimson velvet; the horses were ridden by squires dressed in black, and preceding the hearse were seven squires on great chargers, their draperies trailing on the ground, with the aforesaid arms on their breasts in beaten silver. The two first squires bore plumed helmets, the third carried a standard and the other four had each a large banner with the Acciajuoli arms.” In 1366 Niccola also was buried at the Certosa near his son with great pomp.

Donato, a cousin of Niccola, had been sent to Corinth as governor, and in 1392 his brother Neri was created Duke of Athens, Lord of Megara, Platæa, Thebes and Corinth. Neri’s illegitimate son Antonio inherited only the Lordship of Bœotia and Thebes, while Athens returned to the crown of Naples. The Venetians immediately seized it, but Antonio, worthy scion of a splendid race, soon drove them out and held the place for himself. He was succeeded by his cousin Neri who, dethroned by his brother Antonio, only got back his estates after the death of the latter. Neri’s son was a child when his father died and Sultan Mahomet II, refusing to acknowledge his title to the throne, named Francesco, Antonio’s son, in his stead. His tyranny was so intolerable that the Sultan ordered him to be strangled and thus, after seventy years of sovereignty ended the Acciajuoli rulers of Greece. Demostene Tiribilli-Giuliani, from whose work Le Famiglie Celebre Toscane I have gathered the above facts remarks, with a fine disregard of history, “no one mentions Athens after this, indeed its existence was hardly known until our day, when it became the capital of Greece.”

The Acciajuoli constantly figure in the history of Florence as Gonfaloniers, Vicars, Ambassadors, Envoys, Cardinals and Bishops; and one of the saddest and most romantic stories of the eighteenth century has an Acciajuoli as its hero. Roberto, eldest son of Donato Acciajuoli, handsome, clever, brave and fascinating, had long admired Elisabetta Mormorai, wife of Captain Giulio Berardi. On the death of her husband he declared his love and the beautiful widow accepted him. But he reckoned without his uncle Cardinal Acciajuoli, who had made up his mind that his handsome nephew should make an alliance in Rome which might help him in his designs on the papal chair. Prayers, admonitions and threats being of no avail, the Cardinal induced the Grand Duke Cosimo III, to imprison Elisabetta in a convent; upon which Roberto contracted a canonical marriage with her by letter and fled to Milan where he published it, demanding at the same time justice from the Grand Duke, the Archbishop, the Cardinal and his own father. In Lombardy the validity of the marriage was upheld, while in Florence it was declared to be a mere engagement. The lady was removed from her convent to a fortress, upon which Roberto, while the papal chair was vacant in 1691, wrote a circular to all the cardinals, imploring justice from them and from the future pope. All Italy was interested in the unhappy lovers and blamed the high-handed Cardinal and his slavish abettor Cosimo III. In vain Cardinal Acciajuoli tried to excuse himself by throwing all the blame on his relations, his conduct lost him the chance of being made pope, while the Grand Duke was accused of arbitrary and unjust conduct and of truckling to the private spite of a cardinal. Cosimo determined to revenge himself, but for the moment he set the fair prisoner free who immediately joined her husband in Venice, where everyone pitied them and blamed the Grand Duke, by whom formal application was made to the Republic to deliver up the lovers, accusing them of want of respect to their sovereign. They fled, but their steps were dogged, and at Trent they were arrested disguised as friars and taken back to Tuscany, where Roberto Acciajuoli was condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the fortress of Volterra and the loss of his patrimony, while Elisabetta was given the choice of repudiating her marriage or being immured in the same prison. In the hope of mitigating his sentence she chose the former and ended her days in tears and misery, while Roberto died in the most terrible prison of Tuscany, as anyone who has visited the Mastio of Volterra will know.

This is but one of the many instances of Cosimo’s tyranny. An insensate bigot, he was entirely under the dominion of priests and monks who ruined the country and destroyed its morality. Few princes have been more hated by their subjects and their own family, or with better reason.

In the lovely Val di Pesa near Monte Guffone occurred the pretty scene so charmingly described in a long letter by that witty Tuscan, Ser Matteo Franco, chaplain to the Medici, who bandied sonnets and “strambotti” with Luigi Pulci. The austere, rather disagreeable Clarice, wife of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had not been fitted by her education in the stately Orsini palace at Rome for the brilliant pleasure-loving life at Florence, was returning from some baths near Volterra when, as Matteo Franco writes, “... we met paradise full of festive and joyous angels, that is to say Messer Giovanni, Piero, Giuliano and Julio on pillions with their attendants. And when they saw their mother they threw themselves off their horses, some by themselves, some with the help of others; and all ran forward and were lifted into the arms of Madonna Clarice with such joy and kisses and delight that I could not describe in a hundred letters. Even I could not refrain from dismounting; and before they got on their horses again, I embraced them all and kissed them twice; once for myself and once for Lorenzo. Darling little Giulianino said with a long O, o, o, ‘where is Lorenzo?’ We answered, ‘he has gone on before to Poggio to see you.’ Then he: ‘Oh no never,’ almost in tears. You never beheld so touching a sight. He and Piero, who has become a beautiful boy, the finest thing, by God, you ever saw, with such a profile he is like an angel, and rather long hair which stands out a little and is pretty to see. And Giuliano red and fresh as a rose, smooth, clean and bright as a mirror, joyous yet contemplative with those large eyes. Messer Giovanni also looks well, his colour is not so high but clear and natural; and Julio has a brown and healthy skin. All, in short, are happiness itself. And thus with great content a joyous party we went by Via Maggio, Ponte a Santa Trinita, San Michele Berteldi, Santa Maria Maggiore, Canto alla Paglia and Via de’ Martegli; and entered into the house per infinita asecola asecolorum eselibera nos a malo amen.”⁠[69]