bed. Acciaiuoli, who was supposed to have aided in the murder, became
all-powerful when the Queen married Louis of Taranto, and was created
Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom, Count of Melfi, etc. He acquired very
large possessions in Apulia, Sicily and Greece, and was made Count
of Malta and Gozzo, a title he ceded to his son Angiolo during his
lifetime. On the occasion of his going to Avignon as ambassador, Pope
Innocent VI. gave him the Golden Rose (the first time a private person
had been thus honoured), created him a Senator of Rome, Count of the
Campagna and Rector of the ecclesiastical patrimony. He next sent him
as envoy to Bernabo Visconti at Milan to claim the restitution of
Bologna. Finding Bernabo obdurate, Acciaiuoli led the Papal troops
against Bologna and installed the Legate there in triumph. He did not
forget his own country, for it is to him that we owe the magnificent
convent of the Certosa near Florence, where his eldest son, Lorenzo,
as handsome and as gifted as his father, was buried in great state in
1354. He also built the villa of Monte Guffone, of which only the shell
remains showing how beautiful it once was,[1] and the great Acciaiuoli
palace on the Lung’Arno of the same name, adjoining those of other
members of the family. As Orcagna was the architect employed at the
Certosa he may also have designed Niccola’s fine town house. A cousin
of his, Messer Dardano Acciaiuoli, built the church of S. Niccolò in
Via della Scala and commissioned Spinello, who, as Vasari tells us,
was then (1334) beginning to be known as a good painter, to fresco the
whole church with stories from the life of S. Niccolò of Bari. The
church was demolished but some of the frescoes are still to be seen in
the pharmacy of Sta. Maria Novella.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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