FRANCESCO I. -(1541-1587.)

Called upon to succeed Cosimo I., Francesco, the eldest son, had undergone a ten years' apprenticeship to government under his father, and was therefore ripe for the exercise of power. He possessed many high qualities, being of a pacific disposition, devoted to art, and enough of a builder to leave his mark upon Florence. During his reign flourished Bernardo Buontalenti and Giovanni da Bologna, the last great artists of the Renaissance period, and he was himself an adept in the art of stone engraving, which was very much developed and improved at Florence about this time.

At the end of the sixteenth century Florence was at peace, and Francesco I. built the Pratolino at a cost of 782,000 gold crowns, giving free course to his fondness for gardens, fountains, and summer-houses. It was Francesco who founded the Uffizi Galleries, which contain so many masterpieces of painting and sculpture. The varied imagination of Giovanni de Bologna was allowed full scope in the decoration of the Boboli Gardens, and it was at this date that were carved the Giant representing the Apennines which stands in the Pratolino, and the famous Sabine group under the Loggia of the Lanzi.

Francesco married, in 1565, Joanna of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand and sister of the Emperor Maximilian, by whom he had three daughters and a son, Philip, all of whom died excepting Mary, who, by her marriage with Henry IV., became Queen of France.

The salient feature in the private life of Francesco was his passion for the famous Bianca Capello, who eventually became Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Francesco has been represented as sensuous and ferocious, but it seems to me that his defect was rather weakness of character, and when he found that Florence was at peace he left the conduct of affairs to his ministers, concentrating his attention on pleasure and art. He was a very well-read man, too, giving his patronage to printing and literature, his correspondence with Aldo Manucio and Ulysses Aldrovandri, the great printer, being still extant.

Very strange is the episode of Bianca Capello, who, eloping at night from her father's house, eventually finds her way to the Court and becomes Grand Duchess. The story has been told in every book upon Venice, but there are some incidents in it relating to Florence which will be worth narrating here. Barthelemi Capello, a patrician, was the father by his wife, one of the Morosini family, of a daughter named Bianca, born in 1548. Barthelemi, having lost his first wife, remarried, and his second wife, Lucrezia Grimani, who was very young, bestowed little care on Bianca. The latter from her balcony one day espied a young gallant, Pietro de Zenobio Bonaventuri, who was looking at her with evident admiration. He often came to the window, and from exchanging signs they got to exchanging letters, and at last she agreed to meet him. As he was only on a visit to Venice from Florence, Bianca fled with him (28th November, 1563) to the latter city, where they were married, and it was during her husband's lifetime that Bianca, who had acquired great notoriety by her elopement, made the acquaintance of the Grand Duke Francesco. The husband shut his eyes to their intimacy, and was given a post in the grand ducal household; and as he himself led a somewhat irregular life, an opportunity was taken of inveigling him into an ambush, which resulted in his death. There is no positive proof that Francesco had any share in the crime ; but at all events the coincidence is suspicious, for Joanna of Austria was dead, and there was no longer any obstacle to his union with Bianca, a widow. Francesco asked the Senate of Venice to give her to him in marriage, and they were so anxious to secure the friendship of the Grand Duke of Tuscany that they readily assented, though her name had been erased from the Libro d' Oro.

The marriage fetes of Bianca Capello created a great sensation, and they are described in a pamphlet which has been lent to me by the heirs of the late M. Firmin-Didot, and several engravings from which have been reproduced. The Silver Wedding of the Emperor of Austria, the anniversary of which was celebrated at Vienna with great pomp under the superintendence of Makart the painter, gives us some idea of what these pageants were like, but during the Italian Renaissance they had an intensity and a piquancy not to be met with anywhere else. When Lucretia Borgia entered Rome she was followed by two hundred ladies on horseback, magnificently dressed, and each accompanied by the cavalier of her choice. Lorenzo wrote, just before one of his Triumphs, to the Pope asking for the loan of two elephants, which he wanted to introduce into the procession, and the Pope, as he had not any of these animals, sent him two leopards and a panther.

The fetes to celebrate the marriage of Bianca Capello were among the most splendid ever given, and though others may have been more sumptuous in after-times, they did not possess the same stamp of elegance which was peculiar to the age when artistic taste reached its zenith in Italy. Each of the principal groups in this pageant was a masterpiece. Bianca's car was drawn by lions, but to all the others were harnessed horses dressed up in skins of wild animals, or so disguised as to resemble griffins and unicorns ; or buffaloes covered with elephants' skins. Naked men and women had their bodies painted with gold, in order that they might represent the deities of Olympus ; and all Florence was mad with excitement in greeting a prince to whose defects they were ready to close their eyes.

The husband and wife were only united for seven years, and they both died on the 19th of October, 1587, at an interval of only a few hours, in their villa at Poggio Caiano. It was always supposed that they had both been poisoned, but Litta, a very trustworthy historian, in his "Genealogies of Italian Families," puts these suspicions into words. His version is that Bianca intended to poison her brother-in-law, and that her husband accidentally partook of the tart which she had prepared, and that she, when the truth dawned upon her, poisoned herself in despair. He adds that when Cardinal Medici, for whom the tart was intended, came in, and learnt what had taken place, he put his back against the door and would not let any one enter until he was assured that husband and wife had both breathed their last.

A document, however, which goes far towards exonerating Bianca of this charge is a letter from Vittorio Soderini to Silvio Piccolomini, in which he says, The two bodies were opened before burial, and Baccio Baldini and Leopoldo da Barga assured me that in both cases there were the same signs of corruption in the liver and lungs. Bianca Capello had been dropsical for more than two years, and a large quantity of water was taken from her body. The common people believed that both had died of poison, but these stories are all untrue, and those who are the most likely to know think that they died a natural death."

It is said that the body of Bianca was buried in the paupers' grave at San Lorenzo, instead of in the tomb of the Grand Dukes, while the remains of Francesco I. were laid beside those of his first wife, Joanna of Austria ; but some assert that Bianca too was privately interred with her husband. Leaving, as has been said, only one daughter, Marie de' Medici, the future Queen of France, Francesco was succeeded by his brother Ferdinand. There are several portraits of Bianca both at Venice and Florence, the best being those in the Pitti Palace.