Florentine villas

The stately Villa delle Selve, built by Buontalenti, stands high on the crest of a hill overlooking the Arno below Signa about nine miles from Florence. The first mention of it is in the archives of the monastery of San Pier Maggiore where it is stated that the Commune of Florence, in the interest of the creditors of the Acciajuoli bank, sold “a podere with a hut, a brick kiln, etc., at a place called Le Selve in the parish of San Martino a Gangalandi for 270 golden florins.” It afterwards came into the possession of the Strozzi. And when Filippo Strozzi and his wife Clarice left Rome by stealth and sailed to Pisa, a messenger met them with letters from the Cardinal of Cortona and from Niccolò Capponi urging them to come to Florence, so Filippo, a prudent Florentine “decided,” writes old Varchi, “after much meditation not to be the one who, as the saying is, picks the chestnuts out of the fire, but determined to send Madonna Clarice on to feel the way; she being a woman and a Medici would, he conceived, not run the same risk as himself.... Clarice, as courageous as she was proud, accepted the commission without waiting to be entreated, and leaving Piero and Vincenzio her sons, in Empoli under the charge of their tutor Ser Francesco Zeffi, she went accompanied by only Antonio da Barberino and Maestro Marcantonio da San Gemignano to dine at Le Selve near Signa, a most favourite villa of Filippo’s and from thence the same evening proceeded to Florence.”

Marchese Filippo di Averardo Salviati bought the villa from the Strozzi and in 1611 lent it to his friend Galileo Galilei, who unfortunately for himself had resigned his professorship at Padua to accept the appointment of court mathematician in Florence. It is a curious fact that two of the greatest of Italians, Giovanni Boccaccio and Galileo Galilei, had a common ancestor in Bonajuto, Lord of Pogna in the Val d’Elsa. Bonajuto’s son Chellino was grandfather to Boccaccio; another son, Giovanni, was the father of a celebrated doctor Maestro Galileo from whom descended Vincenzio Galilei, a musician of some repute and author of a dialogue on music printed in Florence in 1581, he married Giulia Ammanati, and their son—the famous Galileo—was born in Pisa in 1564. A descendant of a third son of old Maestro Galileo was governor of Pisa in 1837 and most bitterly resented any allusion to his relationship with a man who had been in the prisons of the Inquisition. The arms of the two families are identical, save that the red ladder of the Galilei is placed vertically on a gold ground while that of the Chellini is diagonal.⁠[77]

The room occupied by Galileo at the Selve communicates by a winding staircase with an upper terrace where he used to spend the nights in watching the stars. Here he discovered the spots on the sun and its revolution upon its axis, the ring of Saturn, the phases of Venus and Mars and their rotation round the sun, and here he wrote his treatise on the planets, the history of the sun-spots and other works. He loved the country and country pursuits, and his favourite recreation was working in the garden; very proud was he of his skill in pruning vines and fruit trees and he used to declare there was no better preservative of health than living in the open air. A wall at the back of the villa with a peculiar curve is said to have been built under his supervision. If two people whisper in a low voice at the ends each can hear the other distinctly.

In 1614 Filippo Strozzi died at Barcelona and Galileo left the villa he loved so well. About the same time a Dominican friar, Tommaso Caccini, preached a sermon in Santa Maria Novella denouncing Galileo and all professors of mathematics. “Mathematics are of the devil,” he exclaimed, “and mathematicians as the authors of all heresies should be driven out of every state.” Monks and theologians denied the existence of the Medicean planets, some even insisted that the moon shone by her own unaided light.⁠[78]

From the broad terrace of the villa the view is magnificent, “you see half the world” the peasants say. Below is the glinting river fringed with tall poplars and on the summit of the hill on the opposite bank stands the huge Medicean Villa Artimino surrounded by ilexes. To the right is the picturesque old bridge across the Arno connecting Ponte a Signa with Beata Signa; further away still the grey machicolated walls and towers of Lastra a Signa stand out against the fruitful green plain. In the far distance Poggio a Cajano rises like a giant above the village clustering round it, and the trees look like shrubs beside the villa where Francesco I, and his second wife, “the infamous Bianca” as her brother-in-law called her, died on the 19th and 20th October 1587.

Lastra a Signa owes its walls, built in 1377, to the English condottiere Sir John Hawkwood; he advised the Republic of Florence to erect them as a defence against the Pisans who some years before, aided by English auxiliaries, had taken and burnt the strong castle of Gangalandi near by. Twenty years later Alberigo, a captain in the pay of Galeazzo Visconti Lord of Milan who was at deadly feud with the Republic of Florence, besieged and took Lastra a Signa. The walls were restored again in time to keep part of the army of the Prince of Orange at bay for some time in 1529. Francesco Ferrucci, whose head-quarters were at Empoli five miles lower down the river, had garrisoned the place with some of his best troops, and as long as their ammunition lasted they beat off the Spaniards. Whilst treating for the surrender, five hundred more Spanish Lances arrived with scaling ladders and battering-rams, made a breach in the walls (which still exists) and cut the defenders to pieces.

Beata Signa on the opposite bank of the river, owes its name of Beata (Blessed) to a shepherdess. Giovanna was a good and holy maiden who tended her flock of sheep on the banks of the Arno and worked miracles in days long past. Her mummified body still lies under an altar in the picturesque church, and on Easter Monday the pretty old-world Festa degli Angeli is held in her honour. The confraternities of neighbouring parishes bring offerings of oil, for the lamp kept always burning before her tomb, in small barrels slung pannier fashion on a donkey. On a little platform above the barrels stands the Angel, the prettiest small child of the parish, supported by an iron upright ending in a hoop. Crowned with roses and carnations, decked with the pearl necklaces of the peasant women and often with a pair of white wings fastened to its shoulders, the Angel on the donkey form the centre of many processions which wind along the country lanes with banners flying and generally a band playing. As each procession arrives in the little townlet of Beata Signa it files into the old church, the Angel and the barrels of oil are lifted off the donkey in front of the altar of the Blessed Giovanna, the band plays its loudest and sometimes the donkey brays, which causes great amusement.

Near by the Villa delle Selve, nestling amid elms and cypresses on a spur of the same hill, is the church of Le Selve adjoining a monastery of Carmelite friars suppressed, like so many others, by Napoleon I. The abbot’s rooms are now inhabited by the village priest and the monk’s garden, with a fine old well in the centre and surrounded by two-storied cloisters, has been turned into a nursery for olive trees. The church, said to have been restored by Buontalenti, possesses a nave of considerable height and beauty terminating in an apse and under the high altar is a small crypt where St Andrea Corsini celebrated his first mass. The young priest fled from the grand preparations made in Florence, and took refuge with the monks at Le Selve; when at daybreak trembling with religious fervour he raised the chalice to his lips a vision of Our Lady appeared to him; smiling graciously she bent her head and said Tu est servus meus.

A miraculous crucifix is in the church, and every fifty years the Festa of the Crucifix of Providence is celebrated in the month of April. Just before sunset the crucifix is borne out of the church followed by a long line of priests, little acolytes in snow-white robes and stalwart peasants dressed in their best carrying banners and canopies. The steep hill down to Ponte a Signa is all strewn with rose leaves, irises and sweet herbs, and the long procession winds down to the river and returns with flaring torches like a huge fiery serpent, creeping up the hill beneath the olives and cypresses when the stars come out. The peasants put candles in their windows and the stately villa, now the property of the Contessa Cappelli, becomes a blaze of light.