Florentine villas

Schifanoja (avoid, or banish care) was the old name of Villa Palmieri when it belonged to Cioni de’ Fini; then the Tolomei bought it in the fourteenth century and called it Villa or Palazzo de’ Tre Visi, either from a bas-relief representing the heads of the Trinity which once existed in a bastion wall, or from a fountain with a head of Janus. In 1454 they sold the villa to Matteo Palmieri, who added to it; but it was a descendant of his, Palmiero Palmieri, who in 1670 transformed the house into “a most noble palace,” and called it by his own name. The northern wing is said to have been built by him; the loggia which connects the two wings and leads on to the grand terrace, guarded by grim stone deities of bygone times, whence a stately double flight of steps sweeps down to the lower gardens, was certainly his handiwork. Palmiero also threw the long archway (forming the terrace) across the old Fiesole road which once divided the Villa from the gardens, and under this archway was the place of meeting of the brethren of the Misericordia of Florence with those of Fiesole. Here they were entitled to rest and allowed to accept a drink of vinegar and water because of the steepness of the road to Fiesole. In 1874 the Earl of Crawford bought Villa Palmieri and made a new carriage road up the hill of Schifanoja to San Domenico; he closed the old one which passed under the Arco de’ Palmieri, so now the brethren of the two confraternities meet and rest in the little garden at the entrance gate.

The legendary derivation of the name of the old owners of the Villa is poetical and pretty. When Otho I conquered Berenger IV Pope Agabetus II sent a palm branch with a congratulatory message to the Emperor, who appointed his favourite young cup-bearer to carry the branch before him, and thus show the world how highly he had been honoured by the Pope. The handsome lad came to be called il Palmiero (the palm-bearer), and his own name was forgotten. Some years later Otho gave him a castle in the Mugello, and his grandson, who inherited the family good-looks, won the heart of the only daughter of Latino, Lord of Rasoio. Thus, according to the old legend, did the Palmieri become powerful and possessed of great wealth. Their real story is more prosaic. Vespasiano da Bisticci, bookseller and scribe, a biographer of rare merit who was a contemporary of Matteo, writes: “The Florentine Matteo di Marco Palmieri, born of parents in a humble condition of life, founded his house and ennobled it by his singular virtues.” They were of the guild of pharmacists, and in the State archives is the note-book of Matteo, with entries of the different sources of the family income. He often laments bitterly how little the pharmacy of the Canto alle Rondine brought in, and how taxes increased every year.

Matteo Palmieri was born in 1405, Sozomeno of Pistoja instructed him in grammar and rhetoric, and two great scholars—Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Cistercians, and Carlo Aretino (Marsuppini), Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, taught him Greek and Latin. Matteo was appointed to pronounce the funeral oration in Santa Croce in 1453 of Carlo Aretino, and his eloquence was such that he drew tears from all present. A friend of Cosimo de’ Medici, and of all the famous humanists of that period, he was an able scholar and an accomplished author at a time when learning stood high, and when all Florence was ringing with the praises of Pico della Mirandola, Poggio Bracciolino, and Marsilio Ficino.

By his wife Cosa Serragli, to whom he was passionately attached, Matteo had no children, so he adopted his brother Bartolomeo’s two orphan sons, the younger of whom succeeded him in the family pharmacy. In 1437 Matteo became Gonfalonier of Florence together with Adonardo Acciajuoli; in 1445 he was elected Prior of the Commune, and again in 1468. In 1453 he was Gonfalonier of Justice, and was sent at various times as ambassador of the Republic to King Alphonso of Naples, to Siena, Pisa, Perugia, Bologna and Rome.

His book Della Vita Civile was translated into French by de Rosiers; De Captivitate Pisarum, and the Life of the Grand Seneschal Acciajuoli, written in Latin, were translated into Italian and published in a more or less mutilated form. But Città di Vita, the poem which made the name of Matteo Palmieri celebrated, was never published, and probably has not been read by a score of persons since he wrote it. No doubt the Platonic philosophy, then so popular, had taken a strong hold on him. Written in terza rima, it is one of the last poems to have been inspired by the spirit of Dante, and describes how the Cumean sybil leads the author to the Elysian fields through Tartarus, and finally to the City of Life. Lionardo Dati, a pious canon of the cathedral of Florence, who became secretary to the Pope, and Bishop of Massa, to whom Matteo showed the work, pronounced it to be “almost divine,” while Marsilio Ficino hailed him as Poeta Theologicus. In spite of such praise Palmieri sealed up his manuscript, and gave it into the care of the Pro-Consul of the Guild of Notaries with strict orders that it should not be opened till after his death. In 1475, at his funeral in San Pier Maggiore, it was placed upon his breast, and Allemanno Rinnuccini in his funeral oration spoke of it as “the glory of Matteo.” But when the contents of Città di Vita were known, the fury of the tribunal of the Inquisition knew no bounds; they declared that the heresy of Origen contaminated its accursed pages, and wanted to dig up the corpse of old Palmieri and burn it and the poem in one fire. Fortunately the Republic had the strength of mind to resist, and the manuscript was returned to the care of the Pro-Consul of the Notaries. Several pages were damaged in 1557 when the Arno flooded the city, and then with other precious documents it was removed to the Laurentian Library. There it was locked up in a cupboard, of which the librarian was not allowed to have the key lest his soul might be contaminated by the odious heresies contained in its pages. The heretical manuscript, with its dainty, imaginative illuminations of the signs of the Zodiac, is now one of the treasures of the library, and on its last page is the portrait of the author, showing a strong, bony and clever face of true Florentine type.

According to Vasari, Sandro Botticelli painted a picture for the altar of the Palmieri chapel in San Pier Maggiore “with an infinite number of figures, being the Assumption of our Lady, with the zones of the heavens, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Evangelists, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Doctors, the Virgins and the Hierarchies; all after the design given him by Matteo, who was a man of letters and of learning: and he executed the work after a masterly fashion and with extreme diligence. He portrayed Matteo and his wife kneeling at the foot of the picture. But although this work was most beautiful and ought to have been above envy, there were some malicious and evil-speaking persons who being unable to abuse it in other ways, said Matteo and Sandro had fallen into the grave sin of heresy; let none expect an opinion from me as to whether this be true or not; enough that the figures painted by Sandro are in truth worthy of praise for the great work he had in designing the circles of the heavens and fitting foreshortenings and landscapes in divers different ways between the figures and the angels; everything being excellently well drawn.”⁠[1] Eventually the picture was carried to Villa Palmieri and walled up until the beginning of this century when it was taken out of its hiding-place and sold. At length it passed into the collection of the Duke of Hamilton and in 1882 was bought for our National Gallery. Father Ricca in his exhaustive work on the churches of Florence devotes a whole chapter to this “much-to-be-praised” picture and to the Città di Vita. “In these cantos,” says the Jesuit father, “when talking of the angels he [Matteo] follows the condemned opinions of Origen, more from a poetic license than from any theological bias, and supposes that our bodies are inhabited by those angels who are falsely thought to have remained neutral when Lucifer fell; and that God, desirous to try them once more, obliges them to adopt our human bodies. This is the real story of Matteo’s book, which has been altered and corrupted by malevolent and ignorant persons, whose calumnies and lies have been believed even by ultra-montane writers, so that Germany, France and England, were filled with the rumour thereof.”⁠[2]

In 1766 Villa Palmieri was inhabited by Lord Cowper who had come on a visit to Florence and found the place so attractive that he refused to return to England. He married the beautiful Miss Gore who was most popular in her Tuscan home, and the Villa was the scene of many brilliant entertainments, as the Grand Duke admired the young and lovely Countess and was a frequent guest. That dear old gossip, Sir Horace Mann, tells us “the birth of her son [the late Lady Palmerston’s first husband], diffused a riotous joy among the common people who have expressed it for three days by little bonfires and lights at their paper windows.” He also informs us that at a dull Court dinner “the Comptroller of the Table has pleased the Grand Duke much by his giving Lord Cowper and Lord Tylney beer and punch, which he thinks is the constant beverage of the English.” The ambition long cherished by Lord Cowper to be created a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire was at length gratified in 1778, though his desire to be Prince Overkirk was frustrated by the Nassaus, who, as Sir Horace writes, “objected to his bearing their name with the title of Prince. The Emperor [Joseph II.] therefore thought he had found a medium by substituting Overquerque⁠[3] but his cousins of that family have likewise put their negative to that; so that it is now reduced to plain Prince Cowper, for which he must pay ten thousand zecchins (about £5000). The heralds of the Empire have objected to his bearing the arms of Nassau. They don’t allow such a right from females, and more particularly when there is any male branch of the family. Neither the Emperor nor my Lord seem to know what they were about, when it was asked and granted, and I believe that both now repent of it.” Horace Walpole in a letter to Mann criticising Zoffany’s well-known picture of the Tribune in the Uffizzi (now at Windsor) sneers at Lord Cowper’s title of Prince. He says “it is crowded by a flock of travelling boys, and one does not know nor care whom. You and Sir John Dick, as Envoy and Consul, are very proper. The Grand Ducal family would have been so too.... I do allow Earl Cowper a place in the Tribune; an Englishman who has never seen his Earldom, who takes root and bears fruit in Florence and is as proud of a pinchbeck principality in a third country, is as great a curiosity as any in the Tuscan collection.”

Though eccentric, Lord Cowper was a patron of men of letters and had a passionate admiration for Niccolò Macchiavelli; he subscribed large sums to the erection of the great secretary’s tomb in Santa Croce and to the publication of a complete edition of his works; while his generous, hospitable character gained him great favour among the Italians, who are generally inclined to quote the old proverb “an italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate.”

In 1824 Villa Palmieri was bought by Miss Mary Farhill from the executors of the last of the Palmieri. She was an odd woman, but the Florentines appear to have liked her, and she was a favourite of the Grand Duchess Marie Antoinette to whom she left her villa, and who sold it in 1874 to the Earl of Crawford. He planted the hillside behind the villa and made the gardens once more resemble the impassioned description in the Decameron. As a scholar and a student his name stands high, and he will long be remembered in his Tuscan home for many a kindly and charitable act. In 1888 and in 1893 Lady Crawford lent her beautiful villa to H.M. Queen Victoria.

Villa Palmieri has always been identified with the second villa visited by the seven maidens and the three youths in the Decameron. Baldelli, in his Life of Boccaccio, tells us that “owning a small villa in the parish of Majano, Boccaccio took pleasure in describing the surrounding country, more especially the lovely slopes and rich valleys of the Fiesolean hills near his modest dwelling. Thus in the enchanting picture he has drawn of the first halting-place of the joyous company we recognise Poggio Gherardo, and in the sumptuous palace chosen by them afterwards, in order not to be disturbed by tiresome visitors, the beautiful Villa Palmieri. His fairy-like description of the tiny circular valley into which Elisa led the lovely ladies to disport themselves and bathe in the heat of the day, brings that small flat meadow before us, through which the Affrico, after having divided two hills and abandoned their stony ledges, meandering unites his waters in a canal in the adjacent plain under the cloister of Doccia at Fiesole.”

Villa Palmieri will live for ever in Boccaccio’s exquisite and untranslatable Decameron. “The Queen,” he writes, “led them to a most beautiful and sumptuous palace situated somewhat above the plain on a small hill. They entered and went all over it, and seeing the large halls, the cleanly and well-decorated bed-chambers, completely furnished with all that pertains thereunto, their praise was unstinting and they reputed the owner to be rich and magnificent. Then descending and seeing the vast and pleasant courtyards of the palace, the cellars stocked with most excellent wines, and the copious springs of coldest water, they commended the place yet more highly. Desirous of repose they then seated themselves in a loggia overlooking the courtyard (every place being covered with flowers pertaining to that season, and with greenery), and the courteous steward came forward to welcome them and offered rich and dainty sweetmeats and rare wines for their refreshment.” The lovely gardens with pergole of vines laden with bunches of grapes, the hedges of jasmine and crimson roses, the carved marble fountains, whose overflow of water was conducted by cunningly devised underground channels down to the plain, where it turned two mills “to the great profit of the lord of the villa,” are all described by Boccaccio in his inimitable poetic prose.

The mills mentioned by Boccaccio were almost entirely destroyed by a flood of the Mugnone in 1409. Two years later they were rebuilt, and a third mill, nearer the town, was erected after the siege of Florence in 1529, and bestowed upon the Foundling Hospital as compensation for damage done to some of its farms. The arms of the Hospital, a swaddled baby, are still to be seen on one of the walls near the mill.