VILLA 
SALVIATI, 
FLORENCE. 
T is not known who built this massive and 
fortress-like villa, with its towers and machico- 
lations and its sloping bastion-like walls. In 
Iroo it is mentioned in Florentine archives 
as belonging to the Montegonzi, who in 1450 
sold it to Messer Alemanno Salviati. It was 
then described as ‘fa strong castle with towers 
and battlements,” and Vasari tells us that in 1529 
it was besieged by the Florentine mob and burnt. 
That presumably ended its life as a fortress, and 
the massive tower, of which the main portion 
consists, has been transformed by a wide roof 
above its battlements ; a courtyard with Renaissance 
arches has risen inside the adjoining part, but 
there still remain the two tall corner towers, from 
which men-at-arms must have watched in the old 
days of mediwval Florence, when a dwelling-house 
at a distance from the town had also to be a 
place of refuge. 
Jacopo Salviati had already laid out the 
terraced garden in 1510, and in the eighteenth 
century an owner, smitten with the taste for 
rococo. gardening brought in by Francesco di 
Medici, built the long graceful orange-houses, 
frivolous, stucco-decorated erections, with a_balus- 
traded facade and a clock tower. The combination 
makes a fascinating document, and we realise how 
much more interesting the buildings of the past 
are, because successive owners cared nothing about 
their additions being “in keeping.” 
The villa is now approached by a winding 
road of little interest, smothered in trees, but 
from Zocchi’s prints we perceive that the old 
approach led straight up in front, by a broad, 
walled road. All this is now in process of being 
turned into a garden, with roses, bamboos, pampas 
grasses, lawns, and other adjuncts of modern 
gardening. 
The most curious feature of the old garden 
is a spacious grotto-house, some 6oft. square, dug 
out underground and supported by long rows of 
columns, the whole covered in the grotesque 
fashion of the eighteenth century with stalactites, 
shellwork, and ornamented with statuary and 
monstrous animals. It is perfectly cool on the 
hottest day and has the remains of old Jeux 
@eaux ; unfortunately, like all cool, damp, out- 
( 
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door places in haunt beloved of 
mosquitoes. 
For 350 years the villa belonged to the great 
Florentine family whose name it bears. We first 
hear of the Salviati in Florence towards the end of 
the thirteenth century. A doctor, Messer Salvi, 
had two sons, Cambio and Lotto, who became 
priors of the city, and altogether the Salviati gave 
it sixty-three priors and twenty-three Gonfalonnieri. 
One worthless member there was; Giuliano, who 
led the mob against the Medici in 1527, and 
afterwards became the boon companion of the 
dissolute Duke Alessandro. It was he who insulted 
Luisa Strozzi at a masked ball and paid for it 
by being maimed for life by her brother, while 
his wife was always supposed to have poisoned the 
beautiful and virtuous woman who had resented 
his infamous behaviour. Jacopo Salviati was his 
cousin, and married Lucrezia, daughter of Lorenzo 
the Magnificent and sister to Leo X. Jacopo was 
the one man who at the death of Leo X. dared to 
stand forth as the advocate of the liberty of the people, 
and thereby forfeited the favour of Clement VII. 
His daughter Maria married Giovanni delle Bande 
Nere, the famous captain of Condottieri, and was 
the mother of Cosimo I. The family increased in 
wealth and power, and in 1628 the Jacopo of that 
day married Veronica, daughter of the Prince of 
Massa, and was created Duke of Giuliano. A letter 
exists giving an account of the festivities and of 
the wedding presents, including a picture by 
Raffaele d’Urbino. The letter gives a glowing 
description of Donna Veronica, but a contem- 
porary declares that ‘“ Donna Veronica was endowed 
with but small beauty, but had a most violent 
and imperious temper and a jealous disposition. 
Her husband, poor man, had small joy of her.” 
The Duke was handsome, gallant, and accom- 
plished, and, as an anonymous account in the 
Marencelliana library in Florence has it, ‘was 
driven to seek for comfort elsewhere.” Mrs. Ross, 
in her learned book on Florentine villas, to which I 
am indebted for many particulars, has translated this 
manuscript, which had never before been published, 
and which tells the tragedy most graphically. 
There was an old gentleman in Florence, 
Giustino Canacci (to give it shortly), who, being 
Italy it is a 
