Two days later prudent Filippo Strozzi entered Florence; many of his
relations and friends met him at the city gate and escorted him to
his palace, which was crowded by anxious citizens eager to know what
he would do. After long consultation he decided to go at once to the
Palazzo Medici and advise the Cardinal to leave the city with Ippolito
and Alessandro. On the 17th May, 1527, he and Niccolò Capponi rode with
them, through a threatening crowd, down the Via Larga (now Via Cavour)
to the city gate, and Filippo accompanied them ten miles further to
their villa of Poggio a Cajano.
A year later he lost his wife and not liking the condition of things in
Florence went to Lyons, where he had a large commerce in silk. One of
his daughters had married Luigi Capponi and is described by Varchi as
being “not less honest and virtuous than beautiful, noble and of most
engaging manners.” She was invited to a masked ball given in honour of
the marriage of Guglielmo Martelli to Marietta Nasi, where the Duke
Alessandro and his courtiers were disguised as nuns. Among them was
Giuliano Salviati, “a man,” writes Varchi, “of abominable life and ill
fame. His wife bore an evil reputation and he, desiring that others
should be like her, accosted Luisa at the ball and said some words,
with actions worthy of himself but certes not of her; whereupon she,
being virtuous and of high spirit, with haughty speech and scornful
demeanour, repulsed him. But in the morning, when the entertainment
which had lasted until daylight was over and Luisa wished to mount her
horse,[96] he, being impudent and shameless, pressed forward to aid her
repeating the words and the actions of the night before; and with most
angry scorn she replied to him as he deserved. The affair passed, and
would perhaps have had no consequences, had Giuliano been satisfied
with using discourtesy towards a gentlewoman such as she was, and not
openly boasted of his behaviour....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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