Palazzo Torrigiani già del Nero Part 2 - by Prof Dr Henk Th. Van Veen

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)

In Florence, on the Arno, near the bridge - By Henk Th. van Veen

On the south bank of the Arno, right next to the Ponte alle Grazie and facing the Piazza dei Mozzi, stands palazzo Torrigiani già Del Nero.

Palazzo Torrigiani già Del Nero

The building offers only a feeble reflexion of its erstwhile grandeur. Here the Del Nero resided. In those days the palazzo rose straight from the river-bed and formed one massif whole – a veritable bridgehead – with the  Ponte à Rubaconte, the longest bridge of Florence, also known as Ponte alle Grazie, because of the characteristic chapels that were built on it.