arms on door-posts and chimney-pieces. Fifty different commissions were entrusted to Rinaldo, some in the vicinity, and some to the Popes, King Sigismund, to Naples, Lombardy, Genoa, Ferrara, Romagna, &c. The hard-working man left careful and detailed notes of all, which, with the documents and letters relating thereto, he first collected in 1423, and afterwards continued. They are models of a natural, pure, perspicuous, and always appropriate diction, at a time when the Tuscan dialect was threatened with an overgrowth of learned affectation and distortion, and was losing its popular simplicity. These notes are a source of the amplest knowledge of details for any one who earnestly studies the history of this period, remarkable in so many ways.[58] While he was so frequently employed in foreign service—for the year before his exile we find him at Rome—his opponents laboured at home for his ruin. It is as if Gino Capponi, Neri’s son, had thought of him when he wrote the advice intended for his son: ‘He who wishes for a great position in his native city, should not leave it too often, except in important cases.’ ‘Messer Rinaldo,’ says Giovanni Cavalcanti, a contemporary and adherent of the Medici, ‘knew not what fear is. He had clean hands, was well read in the sciences, was full of perseverance and love of justice, so that the multitude accused him of being hard and cruel. He lived only on simple fare, and hated feastings, and was accustomed to say that he who wished to keep in health must be no gormandizer; which his enemies interpreted as meanness. Would to God that we could not have said of this man that he was proud! for else he would have excelled many others in good qualities. But his pride clouded his own virtues, and misjudged those of others.’[59]
Beside the two Albizzi, none exercised greater influence in the guidance of affairs in the half-century of the oligarchy than Niccolò da Uzzano. The name of the family, extinct in the second half of the seventeenth century, was Miglioretti; but they were generally named after a little castle, now a gentleman’s villa, lying south of Florence, in the Greve valley, the environs of which are renowned for their excellent wine. The Da Uzzano appeared first in Florence in the days of the Emperor Henry VII. Niccolò, the son of Giovanni and Lena de’ Bardi, born about the middle of the fourteenth century, represented the moderate principle in the ruling party, as Giovanni di Bicci did among the opposition. He wished for an oligarchy, but did not desire the supremacy of a single family. As long as he lived, a restraint was laid upon the Albizzi; nay, he was even reported to have said, that, if he must live to see one stand at the head of affairs, he would sooner endure Cosimo than Rinaldo. For he feared the violent ambition of the latter more than the crafty calculation of his rival, and said of Rinaldo, that he would see no citizen by his side, but all beneath him, and did not think so much of destroying the Medici as of acquiring unlimited authority over his own party.[60] Niccolò did not, however, trust to its unity, and sought, therefore, to hold and preserve matters equally balanced. His repute was so high, that the faction was indeed named after him, and his beneficence equalled his wealth. In the Via de’ Bardi we still see the great palace which he is said to have had built by the painter Bicci di Lorenzo, and which, as he had no sons, passed with his daughter Ginevra to a branch of the Capponi, which still possesses it.[61] The severe unadorned façade of Opus rusticum still represents the simplicity of the time, which was soon replaced by the greater richness of form of the Medicean epoch; and his statue in marble, said to be a work of Donatello’s, is still shown in the house; whereas another likeness, painted by Masaccio, and once in one of the houses of the Corsican,[62] is said to have disappeared.
But Niccolò wished to leave his native town a memorial of his affection, and began building a lyceum for young men after a design by the same Bicci. By his last will he left a considerable sum invested in the national funds for completing the work and endowing lectureships; but the State expended the money for other purposes, and in the present day only the name of the broad Via della Sapienza, leading from the Piazza di San Marco to the Annunziata, reminds us of Niccolò da Uzzano’s patriotic intention. ‘He who wishes to be of use to the world, and to found of himself an honourable memory,’ remarks Giorgio Vasari, ‘must work himself as long as he lives, and not trust to posterity and heirs.’
Palla Strozzi was not made for the strife of factions; his heart belonged to study. ‘Messer Leonardo of Arezzo,’ remarks the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci,[63] ‘who has left us a whole gallery of interesting portraits of remarkable and meritorious men, used to say of him, that he was the happiest man he had known; for he possessed all that is requisite for human happiness, in intellectual as well as physical gifts. He was very useful to his native city, and obtained all the honours in the home and foreign administration which could be granted to a citizen. As ambassador he received honourable commissions, and, at the same time, always promoted the welfare of his country. With these gifts he united the strictest sense of honour, and was personally the most cultivated and respected burgher of the city. His modesty extended from his private life to his public position. He sought to avoid envy as much as he could, well knowing what harm is wrought by it to the commonwealth, and how it pursues deserving men. He did not like to be seen in public; he never appeared on the square of the Signoria, or the new market-place, except when he was summoned thither. If he went to the Piazza, he took the way past Sta. Trinità, through the Borgo Sant’Apostolo, stayed there only a short time, and then repaired to the palace. He was sparing of time, never wandered about the streets and squares, and scarcely had he arrived at home than he studied Greek and Latin, and lost not an hour.’ He was a rich man. In the registers of 1427 he opened the list of the tax-payers with a sum exceeding the valuation of Giovanni di Bicci by more than a fifth. A great part of his income he employed in the purchase of manuscripts and for scientific purposes. The origin of his family is unknown: the name occurs towards the end of the thirteenth century. That the Strozzi were Guelphs and plebeians is shown by their whole position; that they were popular, we see from the circumstance that the names of more than a hundred of their family occur among the priors of the corporations, while not less than sixteen attained the office of Venner. Their wealth increased rapidly, as did the branches into which they were divided, and in the territory they possessed lands and castles. One of them, Tommaso, was among those of higher rank who turned the popular insurrection of 1378 to their own purposes, and had to esteem himself fortunate in escaping the victorious reaction by a flight to Mantua, where he founded a branch of his family, which is still flourishing. Onofrio (Noferi), Palla’s father, who had died in 1417, seventy-two years old, was one of the most respected men of the republic. He was twice elected Gonfaloniere, and, beside other offices, he filled that of superintendent of the Mint; while embassies led him to the Popes Gregory XII. and Alexander V., when Florence tried her best to restore unity in the Church. It was he who determined on building the beautiful chapel in Sta. Trinità which now serves as sacristy, a building which was completed by his son, and the exterior of which is adorned with the three crescents, the arms of the Strozzi. The epoch of their greatest brilliancy had not yet begun, but they were approaching it rapidly.
As long as the different elements which formed the political parties held the balance of power, peace remained intact at home. The city had never been so rich or so splendid, trade and industry never so flourishing as then; the great burghers had never shown more lively common feeling, or created more beautiful public works, or devoted more helpful interest to science. It was felt that any inconsiderate step, from whatever side it might come, would disturb this peace; but it was this very consciousness of responsibility which enforced prudence. Niccolò da Uzzano used to say that he who summoned a parliament—i.e. who would bring about any decided change in the existing state of things—would dig his own grave.[64] Many respected burghers shared his views. It was natural however that an event should at last occur to cause open discontent in the city, and a more hostile position of the parties. The conquest of Pisa had not satisfied Florentine ambition; Lucca, with which Florence had so often quarrelled, remained a thorn in her side. When, a hundred and twenty six years after the time of which we are treating, Giorgio Vasari was employed in painting the great hall in the former palace of the Signoria with representations from the history of Florentine conquests, he was visited by the Lucchese ambassador at his work, and on his question, what he intended to portray on the remaining space, gave the bold answer, ‘The conquest of Lucca.’ This is only an insolent expression of the popular wish. In the Milanese war, Lucca, where, for nearly thirty years, a citizen, Paolo Guinigi, had ruled with almost absolute power, had taken sides for the Visconti, and thereby certainly placed Florence in some danger. Rinaldo degli Albizzi stood at the head of those who