House of Secrets: The Many Lives of a Florentine Palazzo

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List of Illustrations

Color Plates

Plate 1 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, mid-fifteenth century. Oblique view of facade, designed by Leon Battista Alberti, from Via della Vigna Nuova, c.1865. Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 2 Geri da Settignano (workshop), coat of arms of the Rucellai family, c.1450–80. Detroit Institute of Arts, USA/Gift of anonymous donor/Bridgeman Images.

Plate 3 Francesco Salviati (attributed), Portrait ofGiovanni di Paolo Rucellai, c.1540. Florence, Private collection.

Plate 4 Leon Battista Alberti, Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, San Pancrazio, Florence. Detail of inlay with personal emblem of Giovanni Rucellai. 1467. Photo: Author.

Plate 5 Leon Battista Alberti, winged eye, from Alberti, Philodoxeos fabula, Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria Cod. Lat. 52, c. 6v., c.1437. Reproduced by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo.

Plate 6 Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Completed 1470. Detail of facade, designed by Leon Battista Alberti. Courtesy Scott Gilchrist/archivision.com.

Plate 7 Botticelli, The Story of Nastagio degli Onesti (Scene II), 1483. © Museo del Prado/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 8 Marco del Buono Giamberti and Apollonio di Giovanni di Tomaso, The Story of Esther, c.1460–70. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, 1918.

Plate 9 Pontormo, Portrait of a Youth in a Pink Cloak, c.1525. Pinacoteca Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi, Lucca, Italy. Scala/Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 10 Pietro Torrigiano (attributed), Portrait of Palla Rucellai, c.1506. Detroit Institute of Arts, USA/Gift of Mrs. Ralph Harman Booth/Bridgeman Images.

Plate 11 Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Portrait of Marianna Rucellai, nineteenth century. Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Universal Images Group/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 12 Gian Domenico Ferretti, Mnemosyne with the Muses, 1752. Fresco, piano nobile, Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Photo: Author.

Plate 13 Filippino Lippi, The Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Dominic, c.1485. © National Gallery, London/Art Resource, NY.

Plate 14 Bernardo Daddi (follower), Madonna and Child with Saints, c.1340. The New Orleans Museum of Art: The Samuel H. Kress Collection, 61.60.

Plate 15 Cover of Bant Singer, Delaney, abbi pazienza (Delaney, Be Patient!), published by Mondadori, January 1955. Photo: Lindsay Elgin.

Plate 16 Caravaggio, St. Jerome Writing, c.1605. Rome, Galleria Borghese. Scala/Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo/Art Resource, NY.

Figures

Figure 1 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Detail of facade, showing family emblems and coat of arms. Photo: Author.

Figure 2 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Detail of facade, showing built-in bench. Photo: Author.

Figure 3 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Main portal, 18 Via della Vigna Nuova. Photo: Author.

Figure 4 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Side portal, Via dei Palchetti. Photo: Author.

Figure 5 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Service stair. © Raffaello Bencini/Alinari Archives, Florence.

Figure 6 Theodoor van Thulden, The Discovery of Purple, 1636. Image © Museo del Prado/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 7 Mirabello Cavalori, The Wool Factory, 1570–2. Studiolo of Francesco I, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 8 Boccardino il Vecchio (workshop), bartering scene, from Filippo Calandri, Trattato di Aritmetica, late fifteenth century. Biblioteca Riccardiana, Firenze, Ricc. 2669, c. 66r. Reproduced by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo.

Figure 9 Donato Costanza, books drying in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi, 1966. Reproduced by permission of Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, Florence.

Figure 10 Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1865–67. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation Inc. Gift, Charles Ulrick and Josephine Bay Foundation Inc. Gift, and Fletcher Fund, 1967.

Figure 11 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Plan of ground floor with houses numbered in order of acquisition, c.1846. Photo from Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, II: A Florentine Patrician and His Palace, ed. F. W. Kent et al. (London: Warburg Institute, 1981), pl. 5. Photo: Lindsay Elgin.

Figure 12 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Elevation along Via dei Palchetti (1994). Photo from Simonetta Bracciali, ed. Restaurare Leon Battista Alberti: Il caso di palazzo Rucellai (Florence: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 2006), p. 142, fig. 126. Photo: Lindsay Elgin.

Figure 13 Cross-section of houses belonging to the Gaddi family of Florence, c.1560. Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence. Reproduced by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo.

Figure 14 Loggia Rucellai, Florence, 1460s. Scala/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 15 Leon Battista Alberti, Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, San Pancrazio, Florence, 1467. Scala / Art Resource, NY.

Figure 16 Leon Battista Alberti, Self-portrait, c.1435. Samuel H. Kress Collection 1957.14.125. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Figure 17 David Seymour, Portrait of Bernard Berenson, 1955. © David Seymour/Magnum Photos.

Figure 18 Unknown, The Ship of Fortune, c.1460–70. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 19 Anthony Frederick Sandys, Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards, 1861. Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

Figure 20 Francesco di Neri, called Sellaio, conjoined twins, identified as monsters, from the facade of the Hospital of San Martino in Florence (now lost). c.1317. San Marco Museum, Florence. Reproduced by permission of the Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo.

Figure 21 Emilio Burci, Colossus of Polyphemus, 1832. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Figure 22 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. View of courtyard, showing columns with metal braces. Photo: Author.

Figure 23 Marc Dalessio, Portrait ofAllison Levy, 2007. Private collection.

Figure 24 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. View of courtyard, c.1920–30. Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 25 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Detail of facade, showing biforate window and coat of arms, c.1890. Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 26 Loggia Rucellai, Florence, 1460s. View c.1920–30. © Alinari Archives-Brogi Archive, Florence.

Figure 27 Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. View with east cloister c.1890. Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 28 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Details of facade, showing carved glyphs. Photo: Colby Anderson.

Figure 29 Ludwig Johann Passini, Portrait of Sir Austen Henry Layard, 1891. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Figure 30 Udo J. Keppler, The Magnet. Editorial cartoon from Puck magazine, New York, 21 June 1911. The Morgan Library & Museum. ARC 2650.

Figure 31 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, mid-fifteenth century. Facade, designed by Leon Battista Alberti, view c.1890. Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

Figure 32Portrait of Lysina Rucellai, n.d. Photo from Marcello Vannucci, L’avventura degli stranieri in Toscana. Ottocento e novecento: fra cronaca e storia (Aosta: Musumeci, 1981), fig. 73. Photo: Lindsay Elgin.

Figure 33 George Wright, Portrait ofSir Harold Acton, 1989. National Portrait Gallery, London. © George Wright.

Figure 34 Ruth Orkin, American Girl in Italy, 1951. © 1952, 1980 Ruth Orkin.

Figure 35 Thayaht modeling the tuta, 1920. Courtesy of Sandro Michahelles.

Figure 36 Earrings of Marie Antoinette. Washington, D. C., Museum of Natural History. Image Credit: Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution.

Figure 37Gabriele D’Annunzio in the Nude, 1880. © Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images.

Figure 38 Giuseppe Guzzi, Portrait ofLeon Battista Alberti, 1837. Private Collection.

Figure 39 Milton Gendel, Portrait ofAlvise di Robilant, 1976. © Milton Gendel.

Figure 40 Clifford Coffin, Portrait of Countess Gabriella di Robilant, Vogue 1946. © Clifford Coffin/Condé Nast Collection/Getty Images.

Figure 41 David Lees, Portrait of Cy Twombly (r) with patron Giorgio Franchetti, 1958. Photo: David Lees/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.

Figure 42 David Lees, Portrait of Cy Twombly, 1958. Photo: David Lees/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.

Figure 43 Palazzo Rucellai, Florence. Detail of facade, showing unfinished edge. Photo: Author.

Figure 44 Heather Anne Campbell, Looking over the Arno, 2012. © 2018 Heather Anne Campbell.

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Timeline

Principal events in the histories of Florence and the house of Rucellai

Neolithic period Arno River valley first settled

9th–8th century bce Etruscans establish a settlement (Viesul, now known as Fiesole) on a hill above the valley

59 bce Julius Caesar establishes a Roman colony for retired soldiers on the northern bank of the Arno (Florentia, now known as Florence)

2nd century ce Population: c.10,000

393 City’s first Christian basilica, San Lorenzo, consecrated as its cathedral by Saint Ambrose

405 Siege of Florence, part of a succession of Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire

5th century Church of Santa Reparata constructed within the Roman walls on the site of the present cathedral

Late 6th century City falls to the Lombards, becoming part of the Lombardic Duchy of Tuscany

774 City conquered by Charlemagne; Carolingian era ushers in a period of urban revival

Late 8th century City walls expanded

978 Badia Fiorentina, a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Willa, widow of Uberto, Margrave of Tuscany

996 First Ponte Vecchio built near the site of the Roman-era bridge

1018 Mercato Nuovo built on the site of the old Roman forum

Basilica of San Miniato al Monte built on highest point in Florence

Population: c.5,000

1115 Florence achieves de facto self-government with the establishment of a comune (confirmed by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1183)

1128 Construction finished on the Baptistery, built on the site of a sixth- or seventh-century octagonal structure, itself built on a structure dating to the Roman period

c.1150 Arte di Calimala (cloth merchants’ guild) established

1212 Arte della Lana (wool merchants’ guild) established

Population: c.30,000

1216 Murder of Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti seen as inaugurating quarrel between the Guelph faction (supporters of the papal cause) and the Ghibellines (supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor)

c.1246 Construction of the church of Santa Maria Novella by the Dominicans begins

c.1250 Alamanno discovers Roccella tinctoria (the dye source for poor man’s purple) in an eastern Mediterranean market

1252 Gold florin first minted

1255 Construction begins on Palazzo del Popolo (now known as the Bargello), the first monumental civic building, built for the commander of the civic militia

1261 Alamanno matriculates in the Arte della Lana

1265 Dante born in Florence

1269 Flood

1288 Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova founded by Folco Portinari, the father of Dante’s Beatrice

1293 Ordinances of Justice institute office of gonfaloniere

1294 Construction of the church of Santa Croce by the Franciscans begins

1296 Foundation stone of new cathedral laid on the site of Santa Reparata (rededicated to Santa Maria del Fiore in 1412)

c.1299 Construction begins on Le Stinche, considered the first purpose-built prison in Europe

1299 Palazzo della Signoria (now known as Palazzo Vecchio), seat of the government, constructed on the site of the old Roman theater

1300 City walls expanded

Population: c.100,000, making Florence one of the five largest cities in Europe

1302 Nardo di Giunta, first member of the family to hold public office, named prior of the Signoria (gonfalonier of justice in 1308); the family would give a total of 85 priori and 14 gonfalonieri to the city

Dante exiled

1304 Fire destroys hundreds of houses

1312 Siege of Florence, part of the Wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines

1315–17 Famine

1318 Bingeri, a captain in the Florentine militia, suppresses the revolt of the Tolomei in Siena; rewarded with an addition to the family blazon: a silver lion rampant against a red background

1321 University of Florence founded

1330 Ufficiali delle donne, degli ornamenti e delle vesti (Officers for Women, Ornaments and Clothes) established

1333 Flood kills more than 3,000 people

1334 Giotto appointed capomaestro of cathedral complex; foundations of campanile laid

1345 Ponte Vecchio rebuilt

Bardi and Peruzzi banking families declare bankruptcy

1348 Black Death results in a 60 percent decline in the population

c.1349–53 Boccaccio at work on the Decameron

1355 Cenni di Nardo builds a chapel dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the church of Santa Maria Novella

1360 Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici born in Florence

1374 Death of Petrarch

1376 Construction of the Loggia dei Lanzi begins

1378 Revolt of the Ciompi begins

1389 Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici born in Florence

1397 Medici Bank established

1403 Giovanni Rucellai born in Florence

1404 Leon Battista Alberti born in exile in Genoa

1406 Florence conquers Pisa, signaling the final defeat of the Ghibellines and giving Florence control of an important seaport

1417 Poggio Bracciolini rediscovers Lucretius’ De rerum natura

1421 Giovanni Rucellai occupies his father’s townhouse on Via della Vigna Nuova

1423 Giovanni Rucellai matriculates in the Arte del Cambio (bankers’ guild); made a partner in the fourth-largest bank in Florence

c.1425 Brunelleschi reinvents one-point perspective

1427 Catasto (property tax survey) begins

Population: c.37,000

1428 Giovanni Rucellai marries Iacopa Strozzi; buys second house

Alberti family exile lifted

1432 Ufficiali di notte (Officers of the Night) established to adjudicate acts of sodomy

1433 Giovanni Rucellai buys third house

Cosimo de’ Medici exiled

1434 Cosimo de’ Medici returns from exile; becomes unofficial ruler of Florence, or Pater Patriae

Palla Strozzi exiled

Leon Battista Alberti re-enters Florence in the curia of Pope Eugenius IV

1435 Leon Battista Alberti writes On Painting

1436 Brunelleschi’s dome completed; Duomo consecrated

1439 General Council of Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches held in Florence

1440s Three Rucellai cousins commission a white marble pulpit, designed by Brunelleschi, for the church of Santa Maria Novella

1440 Donatello completes his David; installed in courtyard of Palazzo Medici

1443 Leon Battista Alberti begins On the Art of Building

1445 Giovanni Rucellai at the helm of his own bank, one of the largest in Florence, with branches in Pisa, Rome, Lyon, and Constantinople; buys fourth, fifth, and sixth houses

1449 Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici born in Florence

c.1450 Leon Battista Alberti designs palace facade for Giovanni Rucellai

1452 Ghiberti completes bronze casting of east doors (also known as the Gates of Paradise) for the Baptistery

1454 Amerigo Vespucci born in Florence

1456 Pandolfo Rucellai marries Caterina Pitti

1457 Giovanni Rucellai begins his zibaldone (commonplace book)

1458 Giovanni Rucellai becomes third-richest man in Florence; buys seventh house

1460s Leon Battista Alberti designs loggia for Giovanni Rucellai

1464 Death of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici

1466 Bernardo Rucellai marries Nannina de’ Medici

Leonardo enters the workshop of Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio as an apprentice

1467 Leon Battista Alberti designs burial chapel, modeled after the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, for Giovanni Rucellai

1469 Lorenzo de’ Medici succeeds his father, Piero the Gouty

Niccolò Machiavelli born in Florence

1470 Leon Battista Alberti designs facade of the church of Santa Maria Novella for Giovanni Rucellai

1474 Giovanni Rucellai declares bankruptcy

1478 Pazzi Conspiracy wounds Lorenzo de’ Medici and kills his brother Giuliano (26 April)

1480s Bernardo Rucellai begins to develop newly acquired suburban property, naming it the Orti Oricellari

1481 Death of Giovanni Rucellai

Savonarola arrives in Florence

c.1485 Botticelli paints the Birth of Venus

1487 Giraffe presented to Lorenzo de’ Medici by al-Ashraf Qaitbay, the Sultan of Egypt

1489 Foundation stone of Palazzo Strozzi laid

1492 First legal and physical division of Palazzo Rucellai

Death of Lorenzo de’ Medici

1494 French king Charles VIII invades city to lay claim to the Kingdom of Naples; Medici driven from the city

1495 Bernardo Rucellai’s De bello italico commentarius published

1496 Bernardo Rucellai’s De urbe Roma published

1497 Bonfire of the Vanities organized by supporters of Savonarola (7 February)

1498 Savonarola burned at the stake for heresy (23 May)

Machiavelli appointed secretary to the committee overseeing military matters and foreign affairs

1504 Michelangelo completes his David

1512 Return of the Medici

1513 Machiavelli’s The Prince in circulation

1516 Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai’s Rosmunda, the earliest extant Italian tragedy, first performed in the Orti Oricellari for Pope Leo X

Death of Bernardo Rucellai

Giovanni de’ Medici, second son of Lorenzo il Magnifico, enters Florence as Pope Leo X; later excommunicates Martin Luther

1519 Niccolò Machiavelli begins The Art of War in the Orti Oricellari

c.1520 The madrigal is developed in the Orti Oricellari

1523 Cardinal Clement VII (born Giulio de’ Medici) becomes Pope, two years after the death of his cousin Pope Leo X

1527 In the wake of the Sack of Rome, Medici rule is overthrown and Republic of Florence is established

1528 Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier published

1529 Death of Camilla Rucellai, ardent follower of Savonarola

Siege of Florence, part of the War of the League of Cognac, begins

1531 Second legal and physical division of Palazzo Rucellai

1532 Republic ends; Alessandro de’ Medici named Duke of Florence

1536 Dissection of a monster takes place in the Orti Oricellari

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V visits city

1550 Giorgio Vasari publishes first edition of his Lives of the Artists

1557 Flood (September)

1558 Giovanni Della Casa’s conduct book Galateo published, addressed to Annibale Rucellai

1560 Vasari begins construction on Palazzo degli Uffizi to house the offices of the city magistrates

1563 Accademia delle Arti del Disegno established

1564 Death of Michelangelo

1565 Cosimo I instructs Vasari to build a private passageway (now known as the Vasari Corridor) linking Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi to the new Medici residence, Palazzo Pitti, on the south side of the Arno

1569 Cosimo I proclaimed Grand Duke of Tuscany

1571 Jewish ghetto created

1573 Orti Oricellari sold by the Rucellai

1580 Official rules of calcio fiorentino, an early form of football played in Piazza Santa Croce, published

1583 Accademia della Crusca founded

1600 Wedding ceremony of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France takes place in the Duomo (5 October); as part of the celebration, Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, written by Jacopo Peri, is performed at Palazzo Pitti (6 October)

1604 Birth of Orazio Ricasoli Rucellai, philosopher, scientist, and leading member of the Accademia della Crusca

1610 Galileo appointed Chief Mathematician and Philosopher to Grand Duke Cosimo II

1654 Descendants of Giovanni Rucellai acquire eighth house

1656 Teatro della Pergola, considered the oldest opera house in Italy, opens as a private court theater for the Grand Dukes of Tuscany (until 1718); premieres of Donizetti’s Rosamund of England (1834) and Verdi’s Macbeth (1847)

1668 Cavaliere Giulio Rucellai murdered by del Benino in a duel in Via dei Tintori (17 July)

1677 Rucellai loggia bricked in (not reopened until the 1960s)

Early 18th century Multiple mezzanine floors added to Palazzo Rucellai; a Rucellai daughter hurls herself into the courtyard on the eve of her wedding

1723–37 Reign of Cosimo III’s son, Gian Gastone

1737 Francis, Duke of Lorraine installed as Grand Duke

1740–86 Sir Horace Mann serves as British envoy at Florence

1743 Under Giulio Rucellai, Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs for the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, Palazzo Rucellai undergoes extensive renovation campaign, including the decoration of the piano nobile to celebrate Rucellai’s marriage to Teresa de’ Pazzi

Death of the last Medici, Gian Gastone’s sister, Anna Maria, who bequeaths Medici treasures to the House of Lorraine on condition that none is removed from Tuscany

1765 Death of the Grand Duke Francis; succeeded by his younger son, Peter Leopold

1768 Facade of Santa Maria Novella begins to crumble; Rucellai family threatened with legal action for neglecting their responsibility as custodians of the facade

1784 Galleria dell’Accademia established; Michelangelo’s David installed there in 1873

1790 Grand Duke Peter Leopold becomes Emperor of Austria; appoints his second son Ferdinand III Grand Duke of Tuscany

1799 French occupation begins; Jewish ghetto abolished

1801 Tuscany becomes part of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Kingdom of Etruria

1808 Antonio Meucci, inventor of the first telephone device, born in Florence

Deconsecration of the church of San Pancrazio

1814 French occupation ends; Jewish ghetto reinstituted

1820 Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, born in Florence

1824 Death of Ferdinand III and succession of his son Leopold II as Grand Duke

1826 Giuseppe Rucellai rents piano nobile of Palazzo Rucellai to the Layard family of England

1826 Carlo Collodi, author of The Adventures of Pinocchio, born in Florence

1827 English Cemetery established

1844 Flood

1848 Santa Maria Novella railway station opens

Jewish ghetto abolished

1859 Demonstrations in Florence in support of a united Italy drive Leopold II from city, making him effectively last Grand Duke of Tuscany

La Nazione newspaper first published in Florence

1860 People of Tuscany vote for unification of former Grand Duchy with constitutional monarchy of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Piedmont

1861 Death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Florence

1862 Teatro Comunale opens; home to the annual music festival Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (since 1933)

1865 Florence becomes capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy

Population: 150,864

1869 Piazzale Michelangelo built on a hill on the south bank of the Arno

1871 Capital of Italy relocated to Rome

Gothic-style facade added to the Duomo

1874 Construction begins on the Tempio Maggiore Israelitico (Great Synagogue of Florence)

1881 Guccio Gucci born in Florence

1884 Mercato Vecchio and part of the former Jewish ghetto demolished to make way for Piazza della Repubblica on the site of the old Roman forum

1890 Giulio Rucellai marries Elizabeth Pilar von Pilchau in a Russian Orthodox ceremony in Paris; occupies the piano nobile of Palazzo Rucellai in 1906

1895 Cosimo Rucellai marries Edith Bronson in Venice in 1895; occupies the second floor of Palazzo Rucellai in 1909

1901 Population: 236,635

1914 Facade of Palazzo Rucellai stoned and fire set at rear of house during Red Week (June)

Emilio Pucci born in Florence

1915 Italy enters World War I

1920 Futurist artist Thayaht unveils the tuta on piano nobile of Palazzo Rucellai (July)

1922 Mussolini named Prime Minister of Italy by Victor Emmanuel III

1923 Film director Franco Zeffirelli born in Florence

1929 Journalist Oriana Fallaci born in Florence

1931 Population: 304,160

1932 Santa Maria Novella railway station rebuilt under Mussolini

1935 Italy invades Ethiopia

1936 Writer Dacia Maraini born in Fiesole

1938 Hitler visits Florence; spends several hours in the Uffizi (9 May)

Racial laws introduced (September)

1940 Mussolini declares war on France and Great Britain (10 June)

1943 German occupation of Florence begins

Allied bombing kills 215 civilians and destroys buildings (25 September)

1944 All bridges except Ponte Vecchio bombed by German forces (3 August)

German occupation of Florence ends (11 August)

1946 Umberto II, last king of Italy, abdicates the throne; Italy officially becomes a republic (2 June)

1954 UFO mass sighting during football match at Florence stadium (27 October)

1961 Population: 436,516

1966 Flood (4 November)

1968–85 Monster of Florence murders seven couples in the hills of Florence

1977 Florence–Rome high-speed railway begins operating

1982 Historic center of Florence designated UNESCO World Heritage site

1986 Gran Caffé Doney closes

Late 1990s Palazzo Rucellai undergoes extensive renovation campaign

1991 Population: 403,294

1993 Terrorist attack carried out by Sicilian Mafia in Via dei Georgofili kills five people, damages the Uffizi, Vasari Corridor, and Palazzo Vecchio, and destroys numerous works of art (27 May)

1997 Alvise di Robilant found murdered in Palazzo Rucellai (16 January)

2002 European Social Forum held in Florence (November)

2013 Population: 383,083 (over 1.5 million in metropolitan area)

2018 Population: 413,953 (projected)

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Author’s Note

House of Secrets is a work of creative nonfiction. The subject of my story, Palazzo Rucellai, is an icon of Western art; it is also a private home. I have been fortunate to experience this building in both capacities. As an art historian of early modern Italy on the eve of a yearlong sabbatical in Florence, I was well versed in the work and writing of Leon Battista Alberti, the fifteenth-century architect of Giovanni Rucellai’s palace. But only when I rented an apartment behind its famous facade did my subject come into focus. Over the course of my sabbatical residency, I discovered a different history. Or, rather, I began to see history differently. I saw people, not pilasters; I saw lives. I listened. And I soon learned that Palazzo Rucellai had a personality all its own.

In writing this book, I wished to give the denizens of Palazzo Rucellai, ancient and modern, a voice, so that we might hear what this storied house meant to each of them, how that edifice structured—and confounded—the lives they lived. Many tell us in their own words: Giovanni Rucellai, Bernardo Rucellai, Nannina de’ Medici, Austen Henry Layard, Lysina Rucellai, Harold Acton … Add to this list my own voice—or, rather, voices. For I join the conversation both as an art historian and as a former tenant. As such, the story I tell is, at once, a history of Palazzo Rucellai and an account of how I let myself be consumed by that history.

While this work is based on actual persons and events, certain names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals portrayed. For the purposes of narrative coherence, I have modified certain conversations and events.

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own; I have modernized spelling and punctuation and have adapted certain phrases and expressions for the sake of readability in English.

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Preface

House of Secrets is a book about memory and desire, about the stories that structures hold and the stories that we invent to fill those structures. It is about the sharing of space, the tracing of footsteps, the overlapping of lives … palazzo as palimpsest. It is about the willingness to lose oneself behind the facade, to live between past and present, to slip between the cracks of history and the crevices of our own imagination. House of Secrets is also a lively history of Florence from the Renaissance to the present day, the universally beloved city that produced literary and artistic genius on an incomparable scale and played host in the fifteenth century to what was arguably the most dramatic artistic boom in the history of Western civilization.

The impetus for the writing of this book was my sabbatical residency in the fifteenth-century Palazzo Rucellai (Rü-che-’lī, Roo-cha-LIE), an icon of Western art, a structure that has for so long defined me professionally, and that I would not have ever in my wildest dreams occupied. Yet a serendipitous discovery of an apartment for let within the palazzo lands me in the vortex of history. Immediately upon moving in, I am lost deep inside of this building I thought I knew. My one-room apartment, called Archivio, is wedged between the top two floors—between stories—on what is called a hidden floor. It is from this literal and figurative platform, as I seek to get a foothold in Palazzo Rucellai, that my account of this storied house unfolds.

Far from another architectural history, for countless tomes have been published on the building and its architect, House of Secrets provides the reader with a character-driven historical narrative of Palazzo Rucellai, the first of its kind. Over the course of six chapters, one for every century the house of Rucellai has persevered, the disparate yet closely linked lives of those enmeshed in the history of the house will amass, presenting a single portrait of the edifice itself and a palimpsest of history. Right from its earliest days, the palace has witnessed endless drama. It was built piecemeal by Giovanni Rucellai, the third richest man in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century (buttressed by his ancestor’s discovery of a precious dye, poor man’s purple), and Leon Battista Alberti, the celebrated architect responsible for putting a strong public face on Rucellai’s physical and emotional labyrinth, before being abandoned by Pandolfo and Bernardo, the house’s first heirs, and having its interiors butchered in the sixteenth century by their heirs. In the eighteenth century, Bianca, a Rucellai daughter and the house’s specter, is rumored to have hurled herself into the courtyard on the eve of her wedding, and just before World War I broke out, Lysina Rucellai, a twice-widowed Cossack countess with fascist leanings, hosted champagne-fueled orgies and tango teas in the palace. Even as late as 1997, exactly ten years before my own residency in the house, Alvise di Robilant, an aristocratic art dealer, was bludgeoned to death on the third floor; his murder remains unsolved to this day. Behind each story there is a theme: origin and identity; ambition and arrogance; manners and deception; selective memory and purposeful forgetting; otherness; and doubleness. Running throughout this portrait of place, as well, are larger questions: how we project our own ideals and fantasies onto buildings; and how buildings, in turn, both do and do not comply.

In an attempt to answer these questions from a slightly different angle, interspersed among the residents’ portraits are a series of fluid episodes from the present day, musings on instances from my own palace idyll. This complementary narrative serves to introduce the history of the house while also examining my place within it—and, by extension, my relationship with history itself. In this world where identity is inextricably bound to the seeming permanence of architecture, I eventually come face-to-face with my own fictions. For the more I come to understand this storied structure, the more, paradoxically, it escapes me. Or could it be that the more real it becomes, the less real I feel to myself? Either way, my occupancy proves a turning inside out for both of us. Like the house, I am transformed through time and experience. And in the end, my response to Palazzo Rucellai is informed as much by my education as by my residency, as much by the sense of desire giving way to disappointment as by a sense of denial that soon enough must succumb to truth.

Buildings—like the people who inhabit them—come with a lot of baggage. And if we step deep inside, we discover that some walls do, indeed, have ears—not to mention eyes and even a set of pursed lips or two with which to whisper. Saxa loquuntur. Stones speak. It would be hard to think of a building richer in illuminating stories than Palazzo Rucellai; perhaps it has just been waiting for the right tenant to take note.

It often happens that we ourselves, although busy with completely different things, cannot prevent our minds and imagination from projecting some building or other. Leon Battista Alberti, the fifteenth-century architect of Palazzo Rucellai, understood well the lure of architecture—a pull so strong, in certain instances, that mind has no sway over matter, that we cannot but propel ourselves to occupy, as best we can, the structure, the space, the story that has so seduced us.

What we might call house lust or shelter porn is hardly a modern phenomenon. Earlier escapists were equally compelled to drive by, to see for themselves, to scrutinize. Architectural voyeurism, in fact, was not only encouraged but was also aligned with the workings of nature by the Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni, writing in 1404:

If there is someone who would like to experience [the homes of the private citizens], let them come here and walk through the city. But don’t let him pass through like a temporary guest or a hurrying tourist. Rather, he should pause, poke around, and try to