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The Archivio Bentivoglio in Ferrara

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Cecil H. Clough
Cecil H. Clough*
Affiliation:
Villa I Tatti, Florence
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Extract

The Bentivoglio became the dominant family in Bologna in the fifteenth century, remaining in power until 1506, when Pope Julius II, backed by an army and spiritual sanctions, induced Giovanni II Bentivoglio to flee with his family into exile. Interestingly enough, the Kress Collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., possesses magnificent portraits of this Giovanni, and of his wife Ginevra Sforza, painted by Ercole de'Roberti of Ferrara. The Bentivoglio family and its connections, however, is generally neglected by historians of ‘The Italian Renaissance,’ in large measure because Bologna itself is ignored. Yet almost thirty years ago a scholarly study by Cecilia M. Ady, The Bentivoglio of Bologna: a study in despotism sought to redress this, providing adequate evidence of the importance of the family for the understanding of Italian politics in the Renaissance period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Spring 1965 , pp. 12 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1965

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References

1 London, 1937.

2 ‘Materials for the History of the Bentivoglio Signoria in Bologna,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, XVII (1934), 49-67. This article makes no mention of the Archivio Bentivoglio in Ferrara.

3 Ibid., 57.

4 The Bentivoglio, p. xi.

5 M. Catalano, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto (Geneva, 1931), II, 402. Letters of this Alessandra Benucci vedova Strozzi, who became Ariosto's wife, are printed in L. Ariosto, Lettere, ed. A. Cappelli (Milan, 3rd ed., 1887), pp. 319-338, from the originals in the Archivio Uguccioni-Gherardi, Archivio di Stato, Florence (see Catalano, 1, 616, n. 16).

6 No mention of this Archivio is made in the Annuario delle Biblioteche Italiane (Rome, 2nd ed., 1956), I, 219-222, where the holdings of the Biblioteca Comunale are described. Professor Fiocco was working in the Archivio in 1947, and for his use of material from it see his ‘La casa di Palla Strozzi,’ Atti delta Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Memorie (Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche), serie viii, v (Rome, 1954), 361-382 and especially 373; the offprint in the Museo Civico, Padua, pressmark B.p.b.81/39, has useful additions and corrections.

7 I wish to say that Dr. Nello Rondelli of the Archivio di Stato, Ferrara, gave me every assistance and made my research a pleasure.

8 For instance, ‘Indice,’ fol. Iv, under Scqffa A. Filza 1, Mazzo 1, ‘Lettere di Antongaleazzo Bentivoglio': his dates are 1472-1525; fol. Iv, A.1.7, ‘Lettere dal 1540 a tutto il 1549 di Giacopa Ursina Bentivoglio [wife of Ermes] e Gio. Paolo Tolomei'; fol. 5r, 'Storia delle novili famiglie venete, tra le quali furono annoverati i Signori Bentivogli, Gov. di Bologna, tra quali Giovanni nell'anno 1488.'

9 Cf. Ady, ‘Materials,’ pp. 58-59.

10 For his exile see C. S. Gutkind, Cosimo de'Medici (Oxford, 1938), index references.

11 In Mazzo 4 Lucia was a Capra of Vicenza, and her dialect is obvious. I have retained the orthography of the original.

12 There is a letter dated May 24, 1507, to Tito Strozzi in Mazzo 2, but this was not Ercole's father.

13 For instance, in Libro 9, item 7 is missing.

14 Fiocco's article lists several interesting studies on the subject: R. Cessi, ‘Gli Alberti di Firenze a Padova,’ Archivio Storico Italiano, serie v, xx (1907), 233-284; A. Battistella, I Toscani in Friuli (Bologna, 1898); G. Bini, Famiglie toscane a Cremona (Florence, 1910); T. Bini, ILucchesi a Venezia (Lucca, 1953).

15 Fiocco, p. 363; G. Cammelli, J dotti Bizantini e le origini dell'Umanesimo: I, Manuele Crisolora (Florence, 1941), index references to Palla Strozzi. G. Fiocco, ‘La Biblioteca di Palla Strozzi', forthcoming in Miscellanea T. De Marinis, adds important new material.

16 For the Bank see R. de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank (IWJ-I 494) (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), index references to Strozzi. F. C. Lane, ‘Venetian Bankers, 1496-1533 … , ‘ Journal of Political Economy, XLV (1937), 187-206, does not deal with the Strozzi branch in Venice, whose banking house was in Campo San Canziano; cf. G. Lorenzetti, Venezia e il suo estuario (Rome, 3rd ed., 1963), p. 355.

On August 30, 1519, Crisolino wrote from Rome to Bembo in Venice, ‘Ho parlato con li Strozzi circa el debito. Mi hanno resposto che scriva a V.S., che se quella gli potra mandar dinari prima che a Natale, per lo voglia fare, che l'haveranno molto a caro; se pur non potra, che aspetteranno quanto piacere a V.S.’ (unpublished letter in MS. Bodleiana, Ital. c.23, foil. 74-75v, see C. H. Clough, ‘A portion of Pietro Bembo's Epistolario,' forthcoming in The Bodleian Library Record). Bembo wrote to Lorenzo and Carlo Strozzi on March 15, 1528, about the repayment to the Venice office of a loan of 310 florins which he had made in Rome (this letter is printed in P. Bembo, Lettere inedite, ed. A. Sagredo, Venice, 1855, p. 10). There is a letter from Bembo to Lorenzo Strozzi, without date or address, asking for the loan of 100 ducats. The original is owned by Mr. T. C. Marston of New Haven, to whom I am most grateful for the gift of a photograph and permission to publish. Evidence suggests that this letter was in the ‘Carte Strozziane' of the Archivio di Stato, Florence, until early in the last century, and that it is the missing letter mentioned by C. Guasti, Le Carte Strozziane (Florence, 1884), 1, 575. A letter to Bembo from Luigi Strozzi in Venice, October 3,1535, is in theMS.Bodleiana, fol. 138B-138Bv.

17 See the account in M. Bellonci, Lucrezia Borgia (Milan, rev. ed., i960), pp. 308-314, 396-402. For members of the family as Commissarii at Lugo, see U. Dallari, ‘Le Carte dell'Archivio di Stato in Modena…,’ Atti e Mem. della Dep. St. Patriaper la Romagna, ser. iv, IV-VI (Bologna, 1923), p. 7 of offprint.

18 A genealogical table of the Castiglione family is in J. Cartwright, B. Castiglione (London, 1908), n, 476-477; cf. Bembo's letter to Castiglione's nephew, Ludovico Strozzi, December 26, 1530, in Bembo, Opere (Venice, 1729), m, 267. P. Litta, Famiglie Italiane Celebri, under Strozzi.

19 Le vite degli uomini illustri della casa Strozzi, ed. P. Stromboli (Florence, 1892).

20 An excellent account of the nature and value of notarial documents is in D. Herlihy, Pisa in the early Renaissance (New Haven, 1958), pp. 1-20. For the Strozzi material in Florence and elsewhere, see P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum (London-Leiden, 1963), I, under Strozzi in the index. A catalog of the material in the first series of the ‘Carte Strozziane' was published by C. Guasti and G. Milanesi, Le Carte Strozziane (Florence, 1884-1891), in two volumes; for inventories of the second series, and of the Archivio Uguccioni- Gherardi, see Kristeller, pp. 65, 69. Other material may exist in the 185 volumes of papers transcribed from the Strozzi Archives and now in the Folger Library, Washington, D. C; see Report from the Folger Library, vra, no. 1 (January 23, 1959), 5-6. Useful references to the family are in Catalano, cited above, and in M. Cosenza, Dictionary of Italian Humanists … (Boston, Mass., 1962), iv and v, under Strozzi. Cf. also Alessandra Strozzi, Letters di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV aifigliuoli esuli, ed. C. Guasti (Florence, 1877).

For the wealth of Palla Strozzi in Florence see P.J.Jones, ‘Florentine Families and Florentine Diaries,’ Papers of the British School at Rome, xxiv (London, 1956), especially pp.. 189-190.

21 The tendency in existing works on the subject is to present a somewhat uncritical genealogical narrative, often without archival research. B. Astur's I Baglioni (Florence,, 1964) is a typical example.