This gloomy large palace was entirely rebuilt by Gherardo Silvani for the Guicciardini, “changing it from the old to the modern form and creating a fine staircase,” writes Baldinucci. It stands on the site of several houses belonging to the Benizzi, where S. Filippo Benizzi, General of the Servite Order, who out of humility declined the Papal tiara, was born in 1233.

The Guicciardini came from Poppiana in the Val di Pesa in the XIIth century, and at once took their place among the rich bankers of Florence. Forty-four of the family were Priors and sixteen became Gonfaloniers of Justice, among them Luigi, who was accused of lack of energy at the time of the Ciompi riots. By a whimsical coincidence the mob insisted on knighting him in the Piazza della Signoria, whilst his house was being plundered and burnt. His son Giovanni was Commissary of War with the army of the League in Lombardy and again at Lucca in 1430, when the defeat of the Florentine troops was attributed, not only to his want of prudence, but to his love of gold. He was tried and acquitted; and there is little doubt the accusation was false, promoted by Cosimo de’ Medici whom Luigi had always opposed. Piero Guicciardini on the contrary favoured the ambitious designs of Cosimo, and his son Luigi, when Podestà of Fermo in 1435, captured Antonio Guadagni, the great enemy of the Medici, and sent him to Florence, where he was beheaded. Some years later Francesco Sforza made Luigi Podestà of Milan. With the exception of the few months, during which he was at different epochs Gonfalonier of Justice, most of his life was spent out of Florence as ambassador to various Italian princes and towns. His brother Niccolò married the daughter of the famous condottiere Braccio di Fortebraccio, Lord of Perugia. He was one of the fifteen citizens elected to govern Florence after the death of Leo X. who were dismissed as too republican when Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici arrived in the city. Niccolò was in danger of losing his head after the capitulation of Florence, as he had been one of the most active of the Dieci di Guerra who conducted the defence. His son Braccio, taken prisoner at Montemurlo, was condemned to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Volterra.

The celebrated historian Francesco Guicciardini, nephew to Niccolò, was born in 1482. At twenty-three he was already so able a lawyer that the Signoria appointed him to read the Institutes in public; he then began to practise at the bar and his reputation for eloquence, acumen and gravity, obtained him the post of ambassador to Ferdinand the Catholic of Aragon, from whom his enemies say he accepted a bribe. “Certain it is,” writes Symonds, “that avarice was one of his besetting sins, and that from this time forward he preferred expediency to justice, and believed in the policy of supporting force by clever dissimulation.” In 1513 Leo X. came to Florence, and discerning the ability of Francesco Guicciardini appointed him Governor of Reggio and Modena, to which Parma was added in 1521. Two years later Clement VII. made him Viceroy of the Romagna, and in 1527 Lieutenant-General of the Papal army with supreme authority. This, Passerini declares, was the chief cause of the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of the Pope, the Duke of Urbino disdaining to take orders from a mere lawyer. In the same year he fruitlessly strove to uphold the Medicean cause in Florence, only incurring the hatred of his fellow-citizens and the bitter reproaches of the Pope, who accused him of want of energy. Retiring to his villa near Arcetri he began his famous History, but alarmed at the aspect of things in Florence, he fled to Rome in 1529 and was declared a rebel. Three years later he returned as one of the twelve magistrates who “reformed” the city according to the commands of Clement VII. and the Emperor, “when,” as Varchi tells us, “Messer Francesco Guicciardini was more cruel and more ferocious than the others” [in punishing and proscribing the anti-Palleschi citizens]. He was elected to the Senate of the Eighty, and undertook to defend the cause of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici before Charles V. at Naples, “which he did with such ardour,” writes Bernardo Segni, “confuting the accusations one by one with such contempt ... that the exiles styled him Messer Cerrettieri.”42 He won the cause and Alessandro returned to Florence as absolute ruler. After the murder of the Duke, Guicciardini thought that the young Cosimo would be easily led, and supported his candidature to the throne with all his might. But for once the astute lawyer had misjudged his man. Cosimo I. made him understand that his advice was not wanted and that he intended to be sole master in Florence, and Pitti writes: “when the Duke Cosimo dismissed him together with certain of his colleagues his rage was great.... Astonished and deeply hurt he retired to his villa of Sta. Margarita at Arcetri where, carried away by anger, he re-wrote much of his History to prove that he did not belong to the sect of the Palleschi; and where he could, he attempted to show that he was but an instrument of the Republic.”43 He spent the last year of his life in writing his famous histories and died, aged 58, on 22nd May, 1540. Varchi says of him: “Messer Francesco, besides his noble birth, his riches and his academical degree, and besides having been Governor and Viceroy for the Pope, was highly esteemed and enjoyed a great reputation; not only for his knowledge, but for his great practical acquaintance with the affairs of the world and the actions of men. Of such he would discourse admirably, and his judgment was sound. But his conduct did not tally with his speech; being by nature proud and curt, he was swayed sometimes by ambition, but oftener by avarice, in a manner unbecoming to a well-bred and modest man.” For an analysis of Guicciardini’s masterly Istoria d’Italia and Opere Inedite, I cannot do better than refer my readers to J. A. Symonds’ brilliant pages in the first volume of his Renaissance in Italy. The actual representative of the family, Count Guicciardini, descends from a brother of the great historian and lives in the old palace in which he was born and brought up.