Relive the sad love story of Bianca Capello

The Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, the scene for one of the most talked about romances of the Renaissance - the Grand Duke and a Venetian noblewoman which he was madly in love despite being already married to Joanna of Austria .


Bianca Cappello (1548 – October 17, 1587) was a Venetian aristocrat, who eloped in 1563, aged only fifteen, with an impoverished Florentine by the name of Piero Buonaventuri. The couple fled to Piero’s native city, but the family of Bianca and the Venetian government insisted that the newly weds be immediately returned to Venice. Cosimo I, the Duke then, intervened and allowed Bianca to stay in Florence.

His son, Francesco I de' Medici, had became infatuated with the young Venetian despite being married to Joanna of Austria. In 1574, Francesco inherited the title of Arch Duke. After Bianca's husband was stabbed to death (nobody know if he was assassinated by the Duke), the Duke had the house in the via Maggio renovated in the early 1570s for Bianca so that she would be nearer to his court in the Palazzo Pitti.

With the untimely death of Joan, and the two could finally marry in 1579. But the idyll was disturbed by the reluctance of the ruling family to this woman. Thus it is rumoured that they were poisoned to death in the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano in October 1587. (Unable to verify as based on wiki, in 2006, forensic and toxicology experts at the University of Florence reported evidence of arsenic poisoning in a study published in the British Medical Journal, but in 2010 evidence of the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria, was found in Francesco's remains which you can read more about here.)

Meanwhile, the building was sold by White, after he became Grand Duchess, to Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, where the decoration of the facade was completed around 1579 by Bernadino Poccetti.

Above the door there is a visual pun on the name of Cappello, which means hat in Italian, in the form of a cappello di viaggio, or travelling hat, which was part of the coat of arms of its famous resident.

Today Palazzo di Bianca Cappello belongs to the Municipality of Florence, who turned it into a laboratory and headquarters of the conservation and restoration of books.

Location:
Number 26 of Via Maggio in the district of Oltrarno in Florence .

Source:
Wiki