Why Florence? And, "Why Florence again and again?" people ask me. This blog will attempt to explore that question. Along the way I hope to share how I stay connected to my adopted city when I'm not there. Ideally, I would be in Tuscany every spring, every fall.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Revenge
The plan had effectively misfired, but the plotters were relying on the support of the people. Archbishop Salviati and Jacopo Pazzi with a group of their companions immediately leapt to their horses and rode to the Piazza della Signoria shouting "Freedom!" In the meantime a meeting of the Signoria had been urgently summoned by the gonfonieri Petrucci, who had been informed of what had happened. Salviati requested in vain to be received with the intention of obtaining the support of the public authority: instead he was cast into prison and later hanged. Just a few hours after the conspiracy, his body and that of Francesco Pazzi, who had been wounded himself in the attack, dangled from the nooses outside the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria.
Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, another of the conspirators, initially managed to escape as far as Constantinople, but he was recognized and handed over to the Florentine authorities who condemned him to be hanged. There is a sketch on a sheet by Leonardo da Vinci, which shows him dangling from a noose from one of the windows of the Palazzo del Bargello (see above).
All the members of the Pazzi family were either killed or exiled and their goods confiscated. In addition they were also condemned to a sort of damnatio memoriae; the coats of arms of the family were demolished and erased from the florins of their bank, while their names were banished from all official documents in the city.
For more information go to: http://www.palazzo-medici.it/mediateca/en/schede.php?id_scheda=160
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