From Niccolò Fiorentino’s medals Signor Ridolfi has been able to
identify the young girl visiting S. Anne as Ludovica, Giovanni
Tornabuoni’s daughter, who was then about thirteen. Like her
sister-in-law she is clothed in gold brocade and has her hair dressed
in the same fashion. It seems impossible that Ghirlandaio did not paint
Lucrezia de’ Medici among the other members of the Tornabuoni family,
the more so that he chose for the subject of his fresco the life of S.
John the Baptist, which she had translated into _ottava rima_. She
died, it is true, three years before he began the work, but there must
have been portraits of her in existence, although none have come down
to us. Even after the death of her husband Piero, Lucrezia exercised
more authority than usually fell to the share of Tuscan women; both
Poliziano and Pulci praise her poetic gifts and Niccolò Valori writes:
“she was very eloquent, as can be seen in her translations into our
tongue of parts of Holy Writ.” He adds: “Lorenzo was most deferential
to her, and after his father’s death loved and honoured her; showing
in all his actions not only the affection borne to a mother, but
such respect as is given to a father; it was hard for any to discern
whether he most loved or honoured her.” Her nephew Lorenzo Tornabuoni
was decapitated, and his family exiled, in 1497, for plotting against
the liberty of the Republic in favour of the Medici. A descendant of
his, Niccolò, Bishop of Borgo S. Sepolcro and ambassador to France
towards the end of the XVIth century, introduced the tobacco plant into
Tuscany, which for some time was called “l’erba Tornabuoni” after him.
Lorenzo Ridolfi bought the Tornabuoni houses and incorporated them
into one large palace in the beginning of the XVIth century, but when
he rebelled and his son was decapitated in 1575, all his estates
were confiscated and the palace became the property of the Cardinal
Alessandro de’ Medici. He sold it to the rich citizen Jacopo Corsi, a
friend and protector of Peri, and here, in a theatre built on purpose,
his opera _Dafne_, with words by Rinuccini was given for the first time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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