Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
Among those who had loved Cosimo so well as to go with him into exile,
had been Michelozzo Michelozzi, the architect and sculptor, the pupil of
Donatello. Already, Vasari tells us in 1430, Cosimo had caused
Michelozzo to prepare a model for a palace at the corner of Via Larga
beside S. Giovannino, for one already made by Brunellesco appeared to
him too sumptuous and magnificent, and quite as likely to awaken envy
among his fellow-citizens as to contribute to the grandeur and ornament
of the city, and to his own convenience. The palace which we see to-day
at the corner of Via Cavour and Via Gori and call Palazzo Riccardi, was
perhaps not begun till 1444, and is certainly somewhat changed and
enlarged since Michelozzo built it for Cosimo Vecchio. The windows on
the ground floor, for instance, were added by Michelangelo and the
Riccardi family, whose name it now bears, and who bought it in 1695 from
Ferdinando II, enlarged it in 1715.
In 1417, Cosimo, after his marriage with Contessina de' Bardi, had
bought and Michelozzo had rebuilt for him the Villa Careggi, where, in
the Albizzi conspiracy, he had retired, he said, "to escape from the
contests and divisions in the city." It was here that he lay dying when
he wrote to Marsilio Ficino to come to him. "Come to us, Marsilio, as
soon as you are able. Bring with you your translation of Plato _De Summo
Bono_, for I desire nothing so much as to learn the road to the greatest
happiness": and there too Lorenzo his grandson turned his face to the
wall, when Savonarola came to him in his last hours and bade him give
back liberty to Florence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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