|
Book FirstPart LXXVI
Part LXXVI
I reached Florence in due course, and paid my respects to the Duke
Alessandro, who greeted me with extraordinary kindness and pressed me to
remain in his service. There was then at Florence a sculptor called Il
Tribolino, and we were gossips, for I had stood godfather to his son. ^1 In
course of conversation he told me that a certain Giacopo del Sansovino, his
first master, had sent for him; and whereas he had never seen Venice, and
because of the gains he expected, he was very glad to go there. ^2 On his
asking me if I had ever been at Venice, I said no; this made him invite me to
accompany him, and I agreed. So then I told Duke Alessandro that I wanted
first to go to Venice, and that afterwards I would return to serve him. He
exacted a formal promise to this effect, and bade me present myself before I
left the city. Next day, having made my preparations, I went to take leave of
the Duke, whom I found in the palace of the Pazzi, at that time inhabited by
the wife and daughters of Signor Lorenzo Cibo. ^3 Having sent word to his
Excellency that I wished to set off for Venice with his good leave, Signor
Cosimino de` Medici, now Duke of Florence, returned with the answer that I
must go to Niccolo de Monte Aguto, who would give me fifty golden crowns,
which his Excellency bestowed on me in sign of his good-will, and afterwards
I must return to serve him.
[Footnote 1: Niccolo de` Pericoli, a Florentine, who got the nickname of
Tribolo in his boyhood, was a sculptor of some distinction. He worked on the
bas-reliefs of San Petronio at Bologna, and helped Michel Agnolo da Siena to
execute the tomb of Adrian VI. at Rome. Afterwards he was employed upon the
sculpture of the Santa Casa at Loreto. He also made some excellent bronzework
for the Medicean villas at Cestello and Petraja. All through his life Tribolo
served the Medici, and during the siege of Florence in 1530 he constructed a
cork model of the town for Clement VII. Born 1485, died 1550.]
[Footnote 2: This is the famous Giacopo Tatti, who took his artist`s surname
from his master, Andrea da Monte a Sansovino. His works at Florence, Rome, and
Venice are justly famous. He died in 1570, aged ninety-three.]
[See Giacopo Tatti: Giacopo Tatti, called Sansovino, Tintoretto.]
[Footnote 3: A brother of the Cardinal, and himself Marquis of Massa.]
I got the money from Niccolo, and then went to fetch Tribolo, whom I
found ready to start; and he asked me whether I had bound my sword. I answered
that a man on horseback about to take a journey ought not to bind his sword.
He said that the custom was so in Florence, since a certain Ser Maurizio then
held office, who was capable of putting S. John the Baptist to the rack for
any trifling peccadillo. ^4 Accordingly one had to carry one`s sword bound
till the gates were passed. I laughed at this, and so we set off, joining the
courier to Venice, who was nicknamed Il Lamentone. In his company we travelled
through Bologna, and arrived one evening at Ferrara. There we halted at the
inn of the Piazza, which Lamentone went in search of some Florentine exiles,
to take them letters and messages from their wives. The Duke had given orders
that only the courier might talk to them, and no one else, under penalty of
incurring the same banishment as they had. Meanwhile, since it was a little
past the hour of twenty-two, Tribolo and I went to see the Duke of Ferrara
come back from Belfiore, where he had been at a jousting match. There we met a
number of exiles, who stared at us as though they wished to make us speak with
them. Tribolo, who was the most timorous man that I have ever known, kept on
saying: "Do not look at them or talk to them, if you care to go back to
Florence." So we stayed, and saw the Duke return; afterwards, when we regained
our inn, we found Lamentone there. After nightfall there appeared Niccolo
Benintendi, and his brother Piero, and another old man, whom I believe to have
been Jacopo Nardi, ^5 together with some young fellows, who began immediately
to ask the courier news, each man of his own family in Florence. ^6 Tribolo
and I kept at a distance, in order to avoid speaking with them. After they had
talked a while with Lamentone, Niccolo Benintendi ^7 said: "I know those two
men there very well; what`s the reason they give themselves such beastly airs,
and will not talk to us?" Tribolo kept begging me to hold my tongue, while
Lamentone told them that we had not the same permission as he had. Benintendi
retorted it was idiotic nonsense, adding "Pox take them," and other pretty
flowers of speech. Then I raised my head as gently as I could, and said: "Dear
gentlemen, you are able to do us serious injury, while we cannot render you
any assistance; and though you have flung words at us which we are far from
deserving, we do not mean on that account to get into a rage with you."
Thereupon old Nardi said that I had spoken like a worthy young man as I was.
But Niccolo Benintendi shouted: "I snap my fingers at them and the Duke." ^8 I
replied that he was in the wrong toward us, since we had nothing to do with
him or his affairs. Old Nardi took our part, telling Benintendi plainly that
he was in the wrong, which made him go on muttering insults. On this I bade
him know that I could say and do things to him which he would not like, and
therefore he had better mind his business, and let us alone. Once more he
cried out that he snapped his fingers at the Duke and us, and that we were all
of us a heap of donkeys. ^9 I replied by giving him the lie direct and drawing
my sword. The old man wanting to be first upon the staircase, tumbled down
some steps, and all the rest of them came huddling after him. I rushed onward,
brandishing my sword along the walls with fury, and shouting: "I will kill you
all!" but I took good care not to do them any harm, as I might too easily have
done. In the midst of this tumult the innkeeper screamed out; Lamentone cried,
"For God`s sake, hold!" some of them exclaimed, "Oh me, my head!" others, "Let
me get out from here." In short, it was an indescribable confusion; they
looked like a herd of swine. Then the host came with a light, while I withdrew
upstairs and put my sword back in its scabbard. Lamentone told Niccolo
Benintendi that he had behaved very ill. The host said to him: "It is as much
as one`s life is worth to draw swords here; and if the Duke were to know of
your brawling, he would have you hanged. I will not do to you what you
deserve; but take care you never show yourself again in my inn, or it will be
the worse for you." Our host then came up to me, and when I began to make him
my excuses, he would not suffer me to say a word, but told me that he knew I
was entirely in the right, and bade me be upon my guard against those men upon
my journey.
[Footnote 4: Ser Maurizio was entitled Chancellor, but really superintended
the criminal magistracy of Florence. Varchi and Segni both speak of him as
harsh and cruel in the discharge of his office.]
[Footnote 5: Jacopo Nardi was the excellent historian of Florence, a strong
anti-Medicean partisan, who was exiled in 1530.]
[Footnote 6: I have translated the word brigata by family above, because I
find Cellini in one of his letters alluding to his family as la mia
brigatina.]
[Footnote 7: Niccolo Benintendi, who had been a member of the Eight in 1529,
was exiled by the Medici in 1530.]
[Footnote 8: The Florentine slang is Io ho in culo loro e il duca.]
[Footnote 9: Un monte di asini.]
|
