Canto dei Pazzi

Another reminder of the Pazzi family that we can still see today is the Palazzo Pazzi Quaratesi, or the Pazzi Quarter (neighborhood).  Today, when we walk north up Via del Proconsolo and turn left at Borgo degli Albizi to go to the Duomo, we look up and see "Canto die Pazzi," which means the Pazzi corner.  There we find the main Palazzo Pazzi, which was rebuilt 1462-72 for Jacapo de' Pazzi.  When the Pazzi were executed or exhaled, this property was seized by Lorenzo.  We next hear of it when it becomes a wedding present . . .

Also in the neighborhood is the three-story Palazzo Pazzi-Ammannati, which today houses Florence's small museum of natural history and is also the site of temporary exhibitions.

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The Pazzi Chapel

Of course, the Pazzi should not only be remembered for their bad deeds, their participation in the Pazzi Conspiracy, but also for their good deeds.  The Pazzi Chapel, designed by Brunelleschi, who also designed and completed the dome over the cathedral, is located in the Santa Croce complex.  One passes through the chapel when leaving the church before going to the museum.  Construction was begun in 1442, in the iconic style of Brunelleschi, and is made of pietra serena and white plaster, and is unrelieved by color.

So, while the Medici and their friends were temporarily successful in stripping the Pazzi of their possessions, their properties, their florins (and therefore their dowries--there's another story), in the long run, the Pazzi name continues still today to be visible in Florence. 

Clarice and the Children after the Conspiracy

Above, we see a portion of a fresco by Ghirlandaio in the Sassetti Chapel of Santa Trinita, Florence.  Poliziano is seen here with his pupils, Lorenzo's sons and nephew.

In 1478 , after the Pazzi conspiracy, when the Pope was stirring up war against the Medici he hated, Lorenzo sent his wife and children to Pistoia, where they were the guests of the Panciaticchi, for safety.  With them went Angelo Poliziano as tutor to Piero the eldest boy, then about six years of age.  The stiff, proud Roman, Madonna Clarice, had never know how to gain her husband’s love, and did not get on well with his brilliant, sarcastic, rather Bohemian friends.  She particularly disliked Poliziano’s growing influence over Piero, and at the end of the year there was an open rupture, when she dismissed him with scant courtesy.  One pities them both.  Clarice, already far gone in consumption, was irritable and anxious about her husband, whose attitude towars the Holy See she, with her education, could not approve;  while Poliziano, used to the brilliant talk in the Medici palace, where he measured his wit with Luigi Pulci, Matteo Franco, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, etc., and Lorenzo himself, was bored to death and always longing to be back in Florence.

from Lives of the early Medici as told in their correspondence, as a point of information, most likely by Janet Ross, who translated and edited the letters, which were published in 1910.