After Agostino del Nero
had bought Roberto Nasi’s unfinished new palazzo in 1552, he hired Domenico di
Baccio d’Agnolo, Baccio’s most talented son, to finish the job. In the second
edition of his Le Vite de’ più eccellenti
pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568), Giorgio Vasari wrote that for
Agostino, Domenico had made on the Piazza de’Mozzi ‘the corner parts and a
beautiful terrace to those houses of the Nasi that his father Baccio had
already started to build’ (‘[…] in sulla
piazza de’ Mozzi le cantonate, ed un bellissimo terrazzo a quelle case de’ Nasi
già cominciate da Baccio suo Padre’). However, Domenico cannot have
accomplished much, because he already died a year after Agostino had hired him.
In documents on Palazzo del Nero, Valentina Catalucci recently found that
Agostino had Davide Fortini, an architect who did important engineering projects
for the Medici, work on the palazzo.* I gather that Fortini succeeded Domenico
as architect of the palazzo and that what Vasari described was all his doing. Leonardo Ginori Lisci, author of the standard work on
Florentine palazzi**, recognized the building as described by Vasari, in a print
with the Del Nero genealogical tree from 1590. (fig. 1)
 |
| Fig. 1 Print of the Del Nero family
tree – with the palazzo Del Nero. For picture credits see below. |
He identified Vasari’s ‘cantonate’
with the pictured building’s protruding corners, and his ‘bellissimo terrazzo’ with
the splendid loggia by which it is crowned. However, as we shall now see, things
were not as Ginori Lisci thought they were. In 1561, in the Sala di Clemente
VII in Palazzo Vecchio, Vasari painted his renowned panoramic view of the siege
of Florence in 1530. What has gone unnoticed in the literature on the palazzo,
is Vasari’s depiction of the building in this fresco. (fig. 2)
 |
| Fig. 2 Detail of Vasari's Siege of Florence of 1530 (1561) with palazzo Del Nero. |
Here, the palazzo looks quite
different from the building as it is represented in the 1590 print. It has two
wings that are placed at a right angle. Surely, it is to this palazzo that Vasari
was referring in his Vite. With his ‘cantonate’,
then, he must have meant the palazzo’s riverside wing as a whole, for this wing
must have been the part of the building that, when Baccio died, still had to be
constructed. As the two facades of the palace that are shown on the fresco do
not feature the ‘bellissimo terrazzo’ Vasari is speaking of (the light paint
Vasari applied on the corner of the riverside wing does not represent air, but
a whitewashed part of the wall), this must have been situated on the building’s
opposite, northern or eastern facade.
The question now is, by whose
action and for what reason the palazzo, was transformed into the imposing
building that is shown in the 1590 print. To the first question, Francesco
Bocchi’s Le Bellezze di Firenze (1591)
provides the answer. Bocchi relates that Tommaso del Nero himself had acted as
the architect of his father’s palazzo. It is therefore only logical to suppose
that the 1590 print shows the result of this activity. By confronting the print
to the fresco, we can gain a fairly precise impression of what Tommaso’s
project amounted to. He had the southern end of the palace reconstructed to
form a counterpart to the riverside wing. Between these two wings, to the west,
he had a new wing built, which he provided with the palazzo’s main facade that
gave on the park, the Prato del Nero. Through this intervention, Tommaso had
made his father’s two-winged building into a four-winged palazzo with a cortile
at its centre. Remarkable about this edifice was that it had its stately facade
at its backside and that it was mounted by a loggia that ran over its northern,
eastern and southern wings. At its two ends, this loggia opened onto the roof of
the new western wing, which was built into a terrace fenced by balustrades. The detailed, if somewhat fragmentary description Bocchi gave of Tommaso’s
intervention accords well with what we see on the 1590 print, especially as
regards the palazzo’s west wing. (fig. 3)
 |
| Fig. 3 Detail of the palazzo Del Nero - from figure 1. |
Bocchi wrote that for that side Tommaso designed a facade ‘with
beautiful windows and in its centre the spectator is drawn towards an elegant
gallery, that corresponds to the great hall and is adorned with a balustrade
and is extraordinary beautiful.’ (‘Sono le finestre bellissime in suo sembiante e nel mezzo della facciata
ride (perché è ottimamente divisato) un leggiadro ballatoio, che risponde nel
salone, adorno di balaustri et oltra modo vago.’). Strangely enough, in his description of the
palazzo, Bocchi does not make any mention of Domenico di Baccio nor of the
interventions by Davide Fortini. He only mentions Baccio d’Agnolo: ‘the design
for his building was made by Baccio d’Agnolo and with his plan the rooms were
made that answered to the public road’ (‘fu dato il disegno di questa fabbrica
da Baccio d’Agnolo e con suo ordine furono condotte le stanze, che rispondono
in su la via publica’). Bocchi alleged that Baccio’s rooms were situated on the
ground floor only (‘che son da basso’). All the rest of the palazzo was,
according to Bocchi, Tommaso’s doing: ‘the other [rooms], which are many, were
designed by Tommaso del Nero, the young son of Agostino, with beautiful grace,
as one can see’ (‘le altre, che sono molte, sono state divisate da Tommaso del Nero,
figliuolo di Agostino, con bellissima grazia, come si vede’). Clearly, Bocchi’s
knowledge of the palazzo’s building history was lacunose, for his account does
not square with the visual information on the palazzo as provided by Vasari’s
fresco of 1561. Obviously, the palazzo as depicted by Vasari could not have
been designed by Tommaso: he was only 16 years old then.
Tommaso’s renewal and enlargement
of the palazzo gave him the opportunity to make the ‘salons and halls with
beautiful and rich architecture’ (‘salotti e sale ordinate con bella, e ricca
architettura’) that Bocchi is speaking of, and there were so many of them, that
‘a very great number of people can splendidly go about there’ (‘grandissimo
numero di huomini si possono nobilmente adagiare’). Most of these stately rooms
will have been situated in the palazzo’s new western wing.
Bocchi does not mention when exactly
Tommaso realized this grand project for his father, but in documents from 1569
relating to the palazzo, Valentina Catalucci found evidence for sudden,
grand-scale building activities having been begun in that year. Quite probably,
these activities had everything to do with Pope Pius V bestowing the title of
barone di Porcigliano on Agostino and Tommaso the year before. Apparently,
father and son were eager to show their newly acquired status by renewing and enlarging
their palazzo, even if this had just been completed. Agostino entrusted his
son, who at the time was only 24 years old, with the project. How daunting his
task was, can be inferred from the fact that the new palazzo was only finished
in 1576. By that time, Tommaso had already been dead for four years. His father,
however, lived to see the work completed.
We have already seen that, in choosing the location for his palazzo,
Agostino had taken the Roman palazzo Altoviti as his example. Now Tommaso’s
project shows that, when it came to deciding about the new palazzo Del Nero’s
form and lay-out, he directed his attention to this same palazzo. Bocchi writes
that Tommaso’s palazzo ‘is divided into two houses, as is shown on the outside
by the two portals and the many windows’ (‘È diviso questo palazzo in due
casamenti, come di fuori mostrano le due porte e le molte finestre’). The same
division could be seen in palazzo Altoviti, which also had a portal on either
side of its eastern facade. (fig. 4).
 |
| Fig. 4 Old photograph of the east facade of palazzo Altoviti. |
Another feature that palazzo Del Nero borrowed from palazzo Altoviti,
was the conspicuous roof loggia. Admittedly, Palazzo Altoviti’s roof loggia had
paired instead of single columns, but, as on palazzo Del Nero, it crowned its northern,
its eastern as well as its southern wings. (fig. 5) In the nineteenth century,
this loggia was filled in.
 |
| Fig. 5 Palazzo Altoviti shortly before its demolishment. |
What conspicuously lacked from palazzo’s Del Nero’s Arno facade, is the
loggetta that so prominently figured on palazzo Altoviti’s Tiber facade. This
three-tiered loggetta, sometimes attributed to the famous architect Giacomo
Barozzi da Vignola, Bindo had ordered to be built against the adjacent houses
that, in 1552/53, he had bought and attached to his palazzo. The loggetta
rested on four arched pillars that rose from the river bank. It formed one
whole with the salon, or loggia, that Bindo had projected onto the Tiber facade
and that he had asked Vasari to profusively decorate with frescoes. Presumably,
Tommaso found palazzo Del Nero’s Arno wing and facade too narrow to follow his
uncle’s example Instead, he applied Bindo’s device of a salone-cum-loggetta in his new west wing, as is
made clear by the 1590 print and by Bocchi’s words, cited here above, namely that
the spectator viewing palazzo Del Nero’s west facade was drawn to ‘an elegant
gallery, that corresponds to the great hall and is adorned with a balustrade
and is extraordinary beautiful.’ And although Tommaso Del Nero kept his
loggetta within the alignment of the facade, with only its balustrade
protruding, it resembled Bindo’s loggetta in that it was visually supported by
the pilasters that framed the ground floor entrance underneath it. (fig. 3) Evidently,
Tommaso did not literally copy Bindo’s device. He not only kept the loggetta
within the facade, he also had a salone and loggetta built not on the ground
floor but on the piano nobile. Furthermore, his loggetta was two- instead of three-tiered.
It did, however, just as Bindo’s loggetta, feature round columns. Regarding the
salone, Bocchi tells us that Tommaso had a fresco brought there, which he
himself had painted earlier in another room of the palazzo. Obviously, he
thought the main room of the building had to feature frescoes, as was the case
in his uncle’s loggia.
It has been suggested that Bindo had his loggia and loggetta projected
onto the river facade for the sake of the beautiful view over the Tiber. Admittedly,
the view was beautiful, for it included Castel Sant’Angelo. One might, however,
wonder if Bindo and his contemporaries were as charmed by picturesque views as we
are today. In fact, it would not be surprising if Bindo, had he had the
opportunity of building a whole new west wing and facade to his palazzo, would
have opted for a solution similar to the one chosen later on by his Florentine
nephew.
As it appears, Tommaso, in designing the new palazzo Del Nero, also
looked at houses of other family members residing in Rome for inspiration. More
specifically, he turned his eye to a most conspicuous building that, between
1563 and 1570, his only and older cousin from paternal side, Francesco del
Nero’s son Cecchino, had ordered to be built. With the vast capital he
inherited from his father, deceased in 1563, Cecchino, following the fashion of
the day, bought a vigna on the Pincio
and had a casino constructed there in the form of a Greek cross with in its
centre a belvedere. Although modest in its dimension, modern architectural
historians have considered this building to be unique among the casinos that
were then built on the Pincio. It was so remarkable, that eventually it was
bought by the eminent art connoisseur and Maecenas, Cardinal Francesco Del
Monte and after him by the equally cultured Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi. This
last owner expanded the casino and had it decorated by Caravaggio and Guido
Reni. The subject of the fresco painted by Reni, made that henceforth the
building was called Casino dell’Aurora. (fig. 6)
 |
| Fig. 6 Casino dell’Aurora. |
Agostino Del Nero was always very close to his brother and therefore the
two cousins will have known each other very well and Tommaso will have visited
the casino more than once. In her recent, monumental book on Villa Ludovisi,
Carla Benocci has posed the question as to who might have been the architect of
Cecchino’s casino. She suggested a whole number of possible candidates, only
then to discard them.*** What she doesn’t propose is that Cecchino could have
designed his casino himself. What makes this suggestion plausible, is that upon
entering the building, the first thing visitors were confronted with was the
painted allegorical figure of Architecture showing its design. What this points
to is that the owner took great pride in his casino’s design, indeed such great
pride, that one suspects that it was he himself who had been responsible for
it. One can easily imagine Cecchino extolling the building’s exquisiteness to
his younger cousin and having Tommaso admire the casino’s most spectacular
feature. This was the snail shell staircase that went straight up from the hall
to the summit of the belvedere, and it must have given Tommaso the idea of
having a similar one constructed in palazzo Del Nero. In his Bellezze, Bocchi writes: ‘But how great
Tommaso’s mind was, is sufficiently demonstrated by a staircase in the form of
a snail shell, that with admirable industriousness, from the ground floor of
the cortile lead to the roof terrace, with such an even climb that one arrived
at its summit, which was 40 braccia high, in short time and rather with delight
than with fatigue’ (‘Ma quanto grande fosse l’ingegno in Tommaso, […], assai il
dimostra una scala fatta a chiocciola, la quale con mirabile industria dal
piano del cortile cammina insino sul terrazzo con salita tanto dolce, che al
sommo dell’altezza, la quale è 40 braccia, con diletto più tosto, che con
istento in breve spazio si arriva’). Indeed, Cecchino may well have been the
one who induced Tommaso to become an amateur-architect.
The fact that in palazzo Del Nero,
Tommaso copied Cecchino’s staircase, surely says something about the way he
viewed this palace. Evidently, he considered it to be not just a town palazzo,
but also a kind of belvedere. And indeed, the way in which the palazzo formed a
whole with its prato – the then famous Pratello del Nero -, made it look like a
villa suburbana and this was how it was actually represented in the 1590 print.
(fig. 3) Maybe, but this is pure speculation, in designing the new palazzo Del
Nero, Tommaso was thinking not only of Bindo’s palazzo and of Cecchino’s
casino, but also of the renowned Prati di Castello, that were situated between Castel
Sant’Angelo and the Tiber. These prati were just opposite palazzo Altoviti and on
them, uncle Bindo had a luxurious Casino built for himself, lavishly decorated
by Vasari.
* Valentina Catalucci, ‘La famiglia Del Nero di Firenze : proprietà,
patrimonio e collezioni ; il palazzo Del Nero (oggi Torrigiani in piazza dei
Mozzi) ; 1a parte’. In: Studi di storia
dell’arte, 24.2013, 147-180.
**Leonardo Ginori Lisci, I palazzi di
Firenze nella storia e nell’arte, Florence 1972.
*** Carla Benocci, Villa Ludovisi,
Roma 2010.
Picture credits:
Figure 1: Leonardo Ginori Lisci , I palazzi di Firenze nella storia e nell’arte, Florence 1972.
Figure 3: Leonardo Ginori Lisci , I palazzi di Firenze nella storia e nell’arte, Florence 1972.
Figure 5: Domenico Gnoli, ‘Le
demolizioni in Roma: il palazzo Altoviti’, Archivio
storico dell’ arte 1(1888), p. 206.
Figure 6: Giovanni Battista, Falda, Pianta del giardino dell’Eccell.te Signor
Principe Ludovisi a Porta Pinciana, 1670 (http://archivio.istitutosvizzero.it/italiano/roma/villaMaraini/sito/05_sito.html)
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To read Part I of this blog, click here
To read Part I of this blog, click here
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