364 Italian Bookshelf - Ibiblio

“Italian Bookshelf” Annali d’ italianistica 24 (2006) 385
signore, and assorted outbuildings, as bound together in a symbiotic relationship that
paralleled the complicated web of human relationships which linked the estate owner to
his rural dependents (58-79). In keeping with this approach, Lillie pursued countless
minor and often unpromising hints in the archival documents to locate and identify lost
buildings and estates, the most important of this ingenious and archeological detective
work being the discovery that Arthur Acton’s villa, La Pietra, now the property of New
York University, belonged in the fifteenth century to Francesco Sassetti.
The important themes of Amanda Lillie’s book are explored through two case
studies based on the abundant documentation left by two Florentine families: the Strozzi,
an old and large clan whose early fifteenth-century preeminence was destroyed after their
exile by the Medici in 1434, and the Sassetti, a small family of Medici supporters whose
fortunes rose with their patrons’ successful domination of Florence. What emerges from
this comparison of two very different families is a remarkably similar set of attitudes to
rural property, one as notable for an adherence to ancient family traditions as for an
openness to modest stylistic innovation, when perhaps an imminent wedding, or the
expectation of a dowry, acted as the catalyst for a villa’s renovation and modernization.
Lillie also demonstrates, however, that a few individuals within families could take a
subtly different, and even entirely original, approach to the possibilities that ownership of
rural property presented. One of the very interesting aspects of Lillie’s research is the
more rounded view it offers of two well-known Renaissance patrons, whose activities in
the Tuscan countryside have been obscured by an exaggerated focus on their city-based
patronage. Her analysis of Filippo Strozzi’s villa, Santuccio, and of Francesco Sassetti’s
villa, La Pietra, both of which still preserve significant aspects of their fifteenth-century
appearance, allows a more nuanced assessment of these remarkable Florentines and of
Quattrocento rural architecture.
Filippo Strozzi, builder of the magnificent Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, whose size
and expense dazzled contemporaries, emerges in more austere mode as the frugal and
practical owner of the rural estate of Santuccio, and of other farms chosen with a shrewd
eye to a healthy economic return. Santuccio was renovated and added to, not built ex
novo, in keeping with Florentine rural tradition, and Filippo took a distinctly different
view of villa ownership to his brother, Lorenzo, who preferred to sacrifice good
agricultural yields and a site of family significance for “some pleasure (diletto) and
convenience (chomodità)” (149). Even so, Filippo Strozzi was not so obsessed by
utilitarian concerns when he improved Santuccio that he ignored the aesthetic and
modernist considerations that lay behind the plans for his town palazzo.
Like Filippo Strozzi, Francesco Sassetti owned several country properties but La
Pietra, close to town on the well-frequented via Bolognese, was unlike other Florentine
villas of the period. Discerning visitors from all over Italy recognized in Francesco’s
unique country house the emergence of a new sensibility and villa aesthetic. Here was an
original and exciting blend of urban sophistication with rural delight and an interpretation
of magnificence which was to be taken up and exploited further by Lorenzo de’ Medici at
Poggio a Caiano.
This carefully researched and original monograph makes this reader all the more
eager to see published Amanda Lillie’s present work-in-progress, an even more ambitious
examination of the role of the villa and the countryside in Italian Renaissance culture.
Carolyn James, Monash University