[Illustration: VILLA DELL’ AMBROGIANA.] The Ambrogiana was a favourite hunting-lodge of Ferdinando de’ Medici, and the court spent a week or ten days there several times a year. In October 1592 the marriage of Donna Eleonora Orsini, his niece, to the Duke of Segni, son of Count of Federigo Sforza, was celebrated with great magnificence in the private chapel of the villa. After the ceremony a banquet was given in the large hall, when the Grand Ducal table was served by pages dressed in white satin, with Spanish cloaks of red velvet embroidered in gold with the Medici arms and collars of fine lace; four negroes in rich oriental costume handed them the dishes and the servants who waited on the other guests, seated at small tables round the hall, wore sky-blue liveries trimmed with gold lace and a short sword at their sides. In the evening the terrace was illuminated, fireworks were let off and a cantata was sung. For four days the court remained at the beautiful river-side villa and much game was shot in the well stocked preserves, and then the Duke and Duchess of Segni left for Florence and stayed at the Casino di San Marco, lent to them by Don Antonio de’ Medici, until they returned to the Ambrogiana in December to assist the Grand Duke and Duchess to receive Cardinal de Retz. In November 1594 Don Antonio returned from Hungary, where he had been fighting the Turks with the Tuscan contingent sent to the aid of the Emperor of Austria by Ferdinando, and joined the court at the Ambrogiana. His descriptions of battles and sieges amused the Princesses, and if he spoke as well as he wrote to his uncle during the campaign the young ladies were right to linger over their sweetmeats. In the summer of the following year Don Antonio left for Transylvania to join the Austrian army, and some of the best names of Florence appear on the roll of the killed and wounded in battle. When he returned in January he again went to the Ambrogiana to report himself to the Grand Duke who was shooting in the woods of Mount Vettolini.[55] In October 1600 when Maria de’ Medici left Florence for France as the bride of Henry IV, she rested awhile at the Ambrogiana on her way to Pisa. She must have had enough of triumphal arches, addresses, offerings of flowers and madrigals by the time she stepped on board the chief galley of the Knights of San Stefano, where a raised dais had been prepared on the poop for the future Queen of France, with a gilt chair having the fleur de lis of France and the balls of the Medici embroidered on the back in jacinths, topazes and other precious stones. Nine years later the Grand Duke Ferdinando died, and the court retired to the Ambrogiana for the first weeks of deep mourning.