Copyright 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Jacket illustrations: Top: Shepherd Silvio accidentally wounds Dorinda and falls in love with her by Giulio Carpioni, 16451650, fresco. De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / The Bridgeman Art Library. Bottom: Don Giovanni de Medici by Santi di Tito. Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina.
Jacket design: Lisa Roberts
The Library of Congress has catalogued the print edition of this book as follows:
Dooley, Brendan Maurice, 1953
A mattress makers daughter : the Renaissance romance of Don Giovanni de Medici and Livia Vernazza / Brendan Dooley.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-72466-2
1. Medici, Giovanni de, 15671621Relations with women. 2. Vernazza, Livia, 1590?1655. 3. PrincesItalyBiography. 4. SoldiersItalyBiography. 5. WomenItalyBiography. 6. MistressesItalyBiography. 7. CouplesItalyBiography. 8. RenaissanceItalyBiography. 9. ItalySocial life and customs16th century. 10. Social changeItalyHistory16th century. I. Title.
DG738.29.M43D66 2014
945'.07092dc23
2013031633
Montughi, June 28, 2010
Thinking the object of our quest might lie in the villa itself, we made our way to Montughi by the gently winding road out of Florence in the direction of viale Gaetano Pieraccini toward Careggi and the main hospital of Florence. Villa Le Macine was unmistakable by the plaque, affixed to the wall probably long after Livia Vernazza and Don Giovanni de Medici sojourned there. In the vicinity were traces of some other previous owners. Not Giovanni Francesco Maria, the couples son. He lived there after his parents were both dead and made a deal with the Celestine fathers to whom Livia left the property, keeping just the house while the Celestines kept the gardens. But he made his mark elsewhere, not here; and so did some other owners, including a certain Captain Francesco Cardi da Cigoli and members of the Strozzi family. Eventually the villa passed into the Casamorata family, who gave the name to the street where it now stands and, to Florentine music, a composer. Just beyond the villa this road intersects with another, commemorating another previous owner: the Livorno-born actor Ernesto Rossi. By his time, the villa had already played a distinguished role in the history of the performing arts.
We came looking for more evidence of a long-lost love affair, more insight into why a Medici prince formed a liaison with a mattress makers daughter, against his family and a disapproving world, and how they managed to survive. Perhaps engaging with their things ourselves we could understand what their things meant to them and how possession and ownership bound their souls one to another. Sharing some of their spaces perhaps we could sense their freedoms and their constraints. Pieraccini for us was far more than a street name. He was the author of a multivolume study of the Medici family, written in the early twentieth century to demonstrate how personality and medical condition affected political behavior. He was also commemorated because of his role in public health and his term as postwar mayor of Florence. By the time his street was built alongside the hospital that he helped plan, all that remained of Livia was her legend, which he contributed at least to embellishing, if not actually forming.
Around the villa we found no sign of the dramas of love and death mentioned in the documents. Livias coat of arms, improvised by Giovanni to exalt her parentage, was no longer prominently displayed on a corner of the structure. The garden was no longer a respite for weary socialites or a refuge for an outcast. There was nothing left of the fine fountain or the wall in which it was built; fruit trees were few, the rose bushes were small and new, and there were no vegetables. There was a palm in one corner, possibly planted during the fashion for trees that hearkened back to Italys brief African empire. The whole area had been developed well after Florence ceased being the first capital of the new Italian state. Rather than sweeping over a distant horizon, the vista stopped short at the surrounding constructions crowded into the available space during the building boom of the Italian Miracle in the 1950s.
Venturing inside, we discovered a setting for dramas of another kind, not dreamed of by Livia and Giovanni. There had never really been any signs here of the studies that made Giovanni famous in his time, or the disagreements with Galileo that earned him a place in science history textbooks. This was supposed to be Livias villa, not his; but there were also no signs here of the woman whose legend charmed the imagination of Gabriele DAnnunzio, Italys national poet. Gone were the paintings on the walls, by the finest Renaissance and early Baroque hands, Italian and Transalpine; gone were the fine Persian rugs, the rich tapestries, the ornate oak and walnut consoles, chests, tables, chairs, now replaced by utilitarian objects mostly of steel and plastic, resistant to use and mishandling by the legions of young people who now frequent these halls. No small, well-furnished kitchen served up simple but elegant dishes based on ingredients grown on the estate, flavored with herbs and spices from the garden, to be washed down with the products of the attached vineyards, now nowhere to be seen.
A university department devoted to Sciences of Education now held courses in social pedagogy on these premises, terminating in a BA degree qualifying the candidate as a Professional Educator. There was much here worthy of pondering in the context of our two protagonists. We looked at some of the brochures. The innovative style of teaching placed the student at the center of the formative processes. Each one was assigned a tutor, who, with the professor, would accompany the student in activities of analysis, of comprehension, of maturation. User-friendly education in an open society promised each young citizen a chance for self-fulfillment, perhaps the chance that would make their lives. The same approach characterized the kind of childhood education that was the subject of the courses. Seminars proposed What game shall we play? based on the notion that childrens games are a form of knowledge and experimentation with reality. And again, students would be taught to pay attention to the child, as the child has something to sayeven when silent. The language of children is something adults ought to learn, while taking account also of nonverbal communication.
Stepping out again into the warm afternoon, we reflected upon what we had just seen and heard. The principles of the new program seemed to enshrine values and prospects that our society, long since the time of Livia and Giovanni, had come to hold in high regard. Young people should no longer have to run away or remain unheard; nor should they sacrifice themselves on the altar of convention, or be disgraced. Children may behave like children until they find their own road in life. Since childhood happens only once, and since so much of what comes later depends on how it was, expertise moves in where the family moves out, while a society informed by more insight, more tolerance, and more humanity beckons forever in the distance, sometimes more in view, sometimes less.
