“Nidiaci”, an adventure through history

A long time ago, we were just ordinary parents, who had no idea that taking their children to aludoteca after school hours would lead them into an extraordinary journey through history.

We did realise that we were living through a unique experiencewhere families from the US or from Senegal found themselvesin immediate empathy with families of craftsmen of theOltrarno. Something truly precious in a Centro Storicodehumanized by gentrification, pub crawling and “events”.

The ludoteca was both a large room where our childrenfollowed a group of animators, and a mysterious garden, wherewe enjoyed a unique view of the Carmine Church.

One day, Wendy Yates, violist and mother from Colorado,offered to teach violin for free to the children: a revelation thatwe could all do something and not just park our kids there.

In October 2012, a notice on the door told us that the Ludotecawas "temporarily closed" and we discovered that a companycalled Amore e Psiche (“Love and Cupid” no less), had takenover the building and most of the garden, and was making

luxury flats and a parking lot there.

Having a safe place for children, which is also a place for parents to meet, plays a crucial role in thesurvival of the community. And the passion surrounding the issue of the Nidiaci in Florence reflects thebigger question: can real people continue to live in Europe's historic districts?

The parents got together, and gathered 1.422 physical signatures (no one-click online signing!) for anappeal to the mayor who promised to take immediate action. When nothing happened, the families setup an association and managed to persuade the town council to give them at least the keys of what wasleft of the garden. We were able to set up a soccer course with help from the Bianchi, music lessons, anorchard where we plan to bring back ancient Tuscan seeds, birthday parties, concerts and much else.

But we still had to solve the mystery of how a place we all thought was public, could suddenly becomeprivate. Here is what we have managed so far to discover. We present it to you in an unusual direction,moving backward and not forward in time, because that is how we did it.

In this first rough version, we present no sources and of course there may be several mistakes; we hopeto correct them soon!

The Green Dragon, medieval symbol of San Frediano

Wendy and pupils

San Frediano and the "Nidiaci"

The Arno river divides the "Centro Storico" (Historic Centre) of Florence into two quite different areas:the better known part on the right bank, and a smaller area on the left bank.

Traffic and the excessive growth of the tourist industry have changed the nature of the right bank -Florentines speak of the Disneyland of the Renaissance - but had less impact on the left bank, knownas the "Oltrarno". The heart of the Oltrarno is the district called San Frediano – named by the wayafter an Irish saint - clustering around the Carmine basilica: the frescoes by Masaccio and FilippoLippi in the Brancacci family chapel in this churchplayed a key role in the birth of Renaissance art.

San Frediano has always been a poor part of the town,inhabited by the craftsmen and laborers who builtFlorence through the ages. Even today, it houses a mixedpopulation of Florentine craftsmen and immigrants,coming from such countries as Honduras and Japan,Moldavia and Great Britain.

Generations of sanfredianini grew up in an area called "IlNidiaci", a garden reserved for children and theirfamilies, with a building which has been at various times akindergarten, play centre and toy library or "ludoteca", aswell as providing social housing.

Vaguely, we knew that a man named Umberto Nidiaci hadmade the place available to children in 1923, and that ninedecades later, his grandchildren had sold most of it off.

Discovering a secret history

April 29, 2013... We are at the Notarial Archives, in Via dell'Oriuolo, under a beautiful fourteenthcentury fresco which we had never heard of before. With a slip of paper in our hands, hoping againsthope that we can see a contract drawn up almost a century before, the existence of which we had

discovered in a footnote to an article in a revue.

Yes, it is there:

“Before me, Ferdinando Onori son of Adamo,Notary registered with the Board of Notaries ofFlorence, having offices in Via Cavour No. 11[…], there personally appear the following:Colonel Edoardo Othis Bartlett, son of thedeceased Edoardo, Commander andrepresentative of the American Red Cross, bornin Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.”

The other parties appearing before the notarywere the lawyer Umberto Nidiaci; Carlo-Matteo Girard, of whom we knew nothing atthe time; and an attorney for Abbé GastonePighetti.

A plaque just outside the Nidiaci reminds us that Filippo Lippi was born

here

So, Edward Otis Bartlett, commissioner of the American Red Cross in Italy, was one of the signatoriesof a contract for the purchase of the whole area we now call “Il Nidiaci”.

The American Red Cross, the contract stated, had had Nidiaci and Girard sell off some materialbelonging to the ARC, the proceeds to be used to establish an “entity which, in the district of SanFrediano of this city, can provide teaching and popular education, with special attention to children”.The money would be spent on purchasing a property to establish this “entity”; and they agreed that theright place would be that belonging to the “Reverend Don Gastone Pighetti”, in Via della Chiesa.Pighetti, through his lawyer, agreed to sell the property.

Reading through the archaic script, we realized that our garden was not only secret in the sense of beingwalled off and hard to find: it also had a secret history, which no one had told us about before.

A gift by the American Red Cross to the community of San Frediano, not the private property of theNidiaci family at all.

This of course led to new questions:

what had the American Red Cross to do with it, who was Edward Otis Bartlett, what had the property been before, who were Umberto Nidiaci and Carlo-Matteo Girard, and how did Amore e Psiche get away with building flats on the gift by the American Red Cross?

None of us are professional historians, and we had to do all the research at our own personal expense,so please consider everything we write here to be provisional, as we look forward to somebody withgreater resources taking over our job.

The American Red Cross in Italy

American assistance in Italy is so deeply associated with later events, that whenever we tell people thestory of the Bartlett contract, they think we are talking of the Second and not the First World War.

Our attempts to understand ARC involvement were at first frustrating, until we sent an email to JuliaIrwin of the University of South Florida, who immediately responded with a wealth of informationabout a period of history remembered now only by readers of Ernest Hemingway or John Dos Pasos.

To cut a long story short (and also to invite those interested to read her excellent book, Making theWorld Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening), Julia told us how theARC involvement in Europe and in Italy was the first large scale example of what we now think of asquintessential American action abroad. An enormous mobilization of public and private money, acombination of honest intention to help the rest of the world on the part of thousands of young idealistsand a good deal of self-serving propaganda.

Rather than send troops, the USA sent the ARC to Italy – funded with 20 million dollars of those times.An officially neutral organization, it showed every Italian soldier fighting in the trenches that apowerful and friendly nation was taking care of his loved ones at home, by providing everything fromvaccinations to new schools and even jobs for women.

This involved a staggering amount of work, as this illustration sent us by Julia Irwin shows:

Looking at this map, one wonders what happened to it all. How many of these initiatives, in the mostremote corners of Italy, ended up like Il Nidiaci, in the hands of private speculators, the benefactorstotally forgotten.

At the end of the war, official Italian opinion turned against the USA, due to Wilson's opposition toItaly's Balkan ambitions, and ARC operations closed down.

While most of the American Red Cross staff would depart in the early months of 1919, in the aftermathof the Armistice, a small number would remain in Italy until the early months of 1920, as part of apostwar commission to Italy.

E. O. Bartlett became the head of the American Red Cross's commission to Italy on April 1, 1919, andbore the title of "Colonel", a recently introduced manner of stressing the ARC's near-military role. Itwas in this context that he decided to sell off the Red Cross assets, for one final good cause.

Edward Otis Bartlett

Edward Otis Bartlett jr., born in Providence on August 10, 1871, was the second son of Rev. EdwardOtis Bartlett (1835-1909), born in Utica NY, who served as chaplain in the Civil War and then ascongregationalist pastor in Providence.

He graduated from Brown in 1891. Was a speaker at commencement and his names stands first in thelist of special honors for 1891.

He began his career in Italy as a volunteer driver for the American Field Service (entering in October1915), before moving on to the Red Cross.

October 1915 was a year and a half before the United Statesofficially entered the war.

The American Field Service (AFS) still exists, though itsmission has changed – it now concentrates on studentexchange, and is called Intercultura.

The AFS contacted us, and has been extremely helpful.Providing us for example, free of charge with our first photosof E.O. Bartlett.

Here is one taken from The Friends of France, the publicationof an organization established before the US entered the war,to provide succour to the wounded.

We also have some information on Edward Bartlett's archives,but lack the resources to consult them.

The Brown Alumni Monthly (1930-1931) has this to say about him:

“Col. Edward Otis Bartlett died at his villa, Lo Spedaluzzo, Florence, Italy, Oct. 6, 1930. Not manymonths ago in response to a note from the Alumni Office, he wrote that his present occupation was"living — the greatest of the arts." And he exemplified that ideal to an unusual degree. His life was acomparatively short one, as years go, but it was a zestful one, and filled with the joy of doing things.He was born in Providence, Aug. 10, 1871, the son of the Rev. Dr. Edward O. and Anna Jane Bartlett.He prepared in public and private schools, won his A. B. with his class, and his A. M. in 1897. Aftergraduation he became instructor in English and Latin, first at the Cornwall Heights School, Cornwall-on-Hudson, N. Y., and then at Riverview Military Academy, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. He gave up teaching in1911 and removed to Florence, where he had since lived, only occasionally returning to this country. Atthe outbreak of the World War he joined the American Ambulance Field Service and won the Croix deGuerre for bravery under fire. He was secretary of the Paris Branch, American Fund for FrenchWounded, in 1917, Assistant Director General of Civil Affairs, American Red Cross Commission toItaly, November, 1917, to March, 1919, and Commissioner of the American Red Cross to Italy fromApril, 1919, to January, 1921. He was made a Cavalier and then Commendatore of the Crown of Italy,and the gold medal of the Italian Red Cross and the silver medal of the City of Rome were conferredupon him. He loved Italy as he loved living. He was twice married, his first marriage to Louise ChapinWard [daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sanford Ward] taking place on June 17, 1897, and his second toNorma Preston Scott on Feb. 10, 1930, at Watchett, Somerset, England. Mrs. Bartlett survives him, asdo a brother, Dwight K. Bartlett, '98, of Providence, and several other brothers in various parts of theworld.”

Tombstone of Edward Otis Bartlett, in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, San Mateo County, California, USA

The last revolutionary of 1848, Emilio Santarelli, François-Xavier Fabre and“Bonny Prince Charles”

We have not yet been able to find anything about the Abbé Gastone Pighetti: whoever this cleric was,we only know he was born and lived in Marseilles, where he acted as Curé of Notre Dame du Carmel,presumably a Carmelite church like the Carmine behind which the garden lies.Gastone Pighetti hadbeen willed the area by Victor Martial Achille Baille-Maguelonne de Saint-Martin-de-Crau, whodied in 1913 in Florence. This Languedoc aristocrat, last member of the revolutionary government of1848, in his will also gave one million francs to the Louvre and many other properties to the sisters ofSaint Vincent de Paul, “to build a home for the elderly”.

L'Express du Midi, 19 November 1913

Going back in time, Achille Baille had bought what we now call “Il Nidiaci”, in 1886, from anotherinteresting figure.

In 2011, art historian Francesca Petrucci published an article in a specialized review, L'Artista, whereshe told the story of how what we call "the Nidiaci" was originally built by the sculptor EmilioSantarelli, 1801-1886. Santarelli was a collector of works of art and manuscripts: at his death, hewilled no less than 12.420 separate items to the Uffizi, making him probably one of the greatest singlebenefactors of the gallery.

Emilio Santarelli was in his turn the son of another important artist, Giovanni Antonio Santarelli.

Giovanni Antonio Santarelli (1758-1826) was born in Manoppello, a village in the poor southernmountain region of Abruzzo famous because it housed the “Volto Santo”, the supposed image of theface of Jesus impressed on a cloth. The son of illiterate farmers, as a child he whiled away his timecaring for the family sheep, carving drawings onto pebbles, until he was noticed by a priest and takento study art. In the following decades, Giovanni Antonio moved to Rome, where he married VincenzaGesmann, one of the few famous women miniaturists of the times; when she died, he moved toFlorence, where in his workshop somewhere near the Ponte alla Carraia, he began to produce cameoswhich met with enormous success, making portraits of the leading figures of his age, sold to suchclients as Napoleon Bonaparte: the Bargello houses some 300 of his works.

His second wife, Teresa Benigni, was the mother of Emilio Santarelli. At the time, the Santarelli familywas closely tied to another famous artist in Florence, the French painter François-Xavier Fabre (1766-1837), who owned what is now Palazzo Mazzei in Via Santa Monaca 21, just a few steps away fromthe “Nidiaci”.

Fabre made Emilio Santarelli his “universal heir” (some suspect thatFabre might even have been is father), while Emilio Santarelli's veryfirst sculpture was a bust of Fabre.

Putting two and two together, this means that it was Fabre's money –together of course with whatever Giovanni Antonio may have earnedfrom his work – that created our ever more fascinating little Nidiaciworld.

So we decided we had to find out more about Fabre.

First, we found he had escaped to Italy from the French revolution –unlike his famous teacher, Jean-Louis David.

In Florence, Fabre befriended the greatest Italian poet of his time,Vittorio Alfieri.

Giovanni Antonio Santarelli,portrait by François-Xavier

Fabre

As if that was not enough, Vittorio Alfieri was then living in a fashion unusual at the times, with a ladymarried to another man, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, better known as the Countess of Albany,the estranged wife of yet another well-known figure, no less than Charles Edward Stuart, BonnyPrince Charlie.

The story is well known: after the battle of Culloden, the Stuart pretender returned to the Italy where hehad been born, changing from a dashing hero into a heavy drinking, sullen and arrogant man. In thiscondition, he married young Louise, born in what today is Belgium.

The Countess of Albany and Vittorio Alfieri, painted by François-Xavier Fabre

The intelligent and beautiful lady, who hadbeen granted the rather imaginary title of“Countess of Albany”, soon fell in love withthe intense young poet, Alfieri. The pretender,his wife (and the poet) moved from Rome toFlorence in 1776.

Four years later, the Medici grandduke PietroLeopoldo, his wife Maria Luisa of Spain andthe Pope conspired together to organizeLouise's escape to an Ursuline convent. Later,Louise managed to obtain a separation andwent to live openly together with Alfieri, inwhat would become one of the great literarylove stories of all times.

After Alfieri's death in 1803, the Countess developed a close, perhaps intimate relationship withFrançois-Xavier Fabre when the Countess of Albany died, she made her new friend, Fabre, her ownuniversal heir.

Alfieri names the Countess of Albany his universal heir

And of course it was Emilio Santarelli who built themonumental tomb of the Countess of Albany in Santa

Croce

Sculptures and camellias

What all of this means is that Emilio Santarelli was the sole heir of Vittorio Alfieri, the Countess ofAlbany and Jean-François Fabre, all together; and maybe a historian could help us discover whetherhe was, in some way, heir to Bonny Prince Charlie as well.

Emilio Santarelli, in his old age, became a friend of author Violete Page (Vernon Lee), and told her –probably in his palazzo in Via della Chiesa - of his early memories of the Countess of Albany. Andthere is something touching about thinking that Vernon Lee died in 1935; the Countess of Albany wasborn in 1752 (and she of course could hardly forget a Bonny Prince Charlie born in 1720).

In 1838, Emilio Santarelli used his considerable riches to buy a “farmhouse” with an attached “fruitorchard”, behind the Carmine church: that is, “our” garden, the shape of which has remainedunchanged at least since the 16th century, as this map dating back to 1584 shows:

Here, he built what would become Palazzo Santarelli and later the roofed part of the ludoteca, on whatused to be called Via della Nunziatina (now Via della Chiesa).

The building was created for a specific purpose: Emilio Santarelli needed a well lit, large atelier tomake the statue of Michelangelo which now adorns the loggia of the Uffizi. This explains both thelarge entrance from Via dell'Ardiglione, needed for oxen slowly hauling Carrara marble, and the greatdoorway facing the garden. In 1852, William Spence, in a guidebook to Florence, invited tourists tovisit Santarelli's atelier, where they could admire many sculptures being made; but also the fourhundred varieties of camellia which the sculptor grew in his garden.

Camellia Giardino Santarelli and Camellia Bella d'Ardiglione

Today, at least two varieties of camellia still bear the name of our garden: Bella d'Ardiglione, so-calledafter the street the garden is on, and Giardino Santarelli.

The garden became one of the most beautiful in Florence, arranged in flower beds, groves, vases, witha great yew tree at the western end of the garden: its girth leads us to think it about 180 years old. Theyew, one of the oldest native trees of Europe, is now extremely rare.

Santarelli became one of the twelve founders of the Tuscan Horticultural Society, set up in 1852 by theGrand Duke of Tuscany.

Santarelli also collected sketches and artwork, slowly building up an unparalleled collection aroundoriginal donations by Fabre and the Countess of Albany, which he later gave to the Uffizi – the 12.460drawings are perhaps the single largest fund of the Uffizi.

Into the twentieth century

Emilio Santarelli died on October 29, 1886, at the age of 85. In January of the same year he had soldwhat we now call “Il Nidiaci” to Victor Martial Achille Baille-Maguelonne de Saint-Martin-de-Crau,who came from the same part of France as François-Xavier Fabre: Maguelone and Saint-Martin-de-Crau are the names of two villages close to Montpellier, as is Baille's birthplace, Marseillan.

Santarelli had also made the sculpture of the Virgin in the Cathedral of Montpellier – it is easy toimagine there was a close association of some kind between Santarelli and certain aristocratic andCatholic families of the area: it is quite possible that he already thought of using our area for some kindof public destination, as Fabre had already done establishing a museum in Montpellier.

Baille, in his will, as we saw, gave an enormous amount of money to the Louvre and buildings to aCatholic order to establish houses for the elderly; and it must have been in the same spirit that heentrusted our area, not to a relative, but to a Carmelite in Marseille: the idea of using the area for socialpurposes must therefore date back to 1913, not – as we had thought before – to 1920.

In fact, a mere two years later – and a few months after Italy had entered the War - on November 1,1915, the abbé was already renting Palazzo Santarelli to the city of Florence as an elementary school.

In 1920, as we said before, he sold it to Umberto Nidiaci and Carlo-Matteo Girard, who used fundsfrom the American Red Cross to purchase it “in their own name but on behalf of” an “entity which, inthe district of San Frediano of this city, can provide teaching and popular education, with specialattention to children”.

The contract tells us:

“Among the various offers received, the most suitable seemed that made by the lawer Antonio Cuturion behalf of the Rev. Don Gastone Pighetti, owner of real estate located in this city in Via della Chiesaunder the street numbers 44 and 46 and in Via Ardiglione number 36, for which the price of OneHundred and Fifty Thousand Lire (150,000) was asked for. To complete this sum and that needed forthe purchase, the Fascio per opere di assistenza di Firenze gave Fifteen Thousand Lire (15,000), MrCarlo-Matteo Girard Twenty Two Thousand (22,000) and Mr Umberto Nidiaci the remaining amount.”

Something is not clear here with the mathematics: 120.000 plus 15.000 plus 22.000 already makesmore than 150.000; in any case, Mr Umberto Nidiaci's financial outlay must have been very small,lessthan that of Carlo-Matteo Girard.

The “Fascio per opere di assistenza di Firenze” (“Fascio” at the time was still a neutral word, meaningsomething like “League”), or more precisely, the Fascio per le opere di assistenza e resistenza civile,had been set up in March 1918, a moment of enormous difficulty and poverty, in a city full of refugees(as many as 70.000 at a time), where rations had been cut, to put together all the many different publicand private efforts aimed at preventing social breakdown behind the front lines: its purpose thereforewas both social and political. A key role in the Fascio was played by Umberto Nidiaci, one of the mostprominent lawyers in Florence at the time.

It was in this context that the Fascio linked up with the American Red Cross, which was establishingsoup kitchens, “asili” and Aiuti materni in Florence, providing food and basic medical education toundernourished mothers, while closely involving Italian doctors.

Umberto Nidiaci died in October 1928, stating in his will that he owned “a share” of the area togetherwith Carlo-Matteo Girard. Two years later (perhaps not coincidentally, when E.O. Bartlett died), hisson, Egisto Nidiaci, would be claiming the whole property as his own: Carlo-Matteo Girard hadapparently been quietly removed.

Tracking down Carlo Matteo Girard

As improvised detectives, we were unable to find out anything about Girard for a long time, since thefamily name is far too common for Google to be of any help.

One of the institutions established by the American Red Cross was a children's home in Lucca, withwhich Carlo-Matteo Girard appears to have been associated; and the name C.M. Girard appears as thatof the American Red Cross Officer “in charge of civil distribution” at Auronzo, on the military front.

One day, we found an article by Maria Paola Maino in a journal of the University of Chicago, wheremention is made of Carlo-Matteo Girard as an "innovative furniture maker [...] active in Florence" inthe days of Art Nouveau.

We wrote to Mrs Maino (who incidentally made the set for four of Bertolucci's most famous films) andreceived an immediate answer.

From which we discovered that Carlo-Matteo Girard (Firenze 1876 - New York 1945) was the artdirector for Cutler & Girard, makers of artistic furniture. A company established by Harvard graduateMarshall Cutler (Boston 1853 - Florence 1938), designer of the stained glass windows dedicated toCharlemagne and Thomas More which still decorate Harvard Memorial Hall.

Girard married Cutler's daughter, thus becoming part of the Anglo-Saxon community of Florence.

Cutler & Girard furniture

Cutler & Girard's atelier was a few steps awayfrom our garden, in Via de' Serragli 104, alabyrinth of botteghe known as the “Artigianelli”,set up when the horse-driven tram lines closeddown and the area was no longer needed asstables.

In 1910, Cutler & Girard were present with theirluxury furniture at the Universal and InternationalExhibition in Bruxelles.

In October 1925, Cutler's shop in Florence wasransacked during an unspecfied “populardemonstration” (presumably the “Notte di SanBartolomeo” when Fascist squads devastatedmany places belonging to supposed Freemasons),an event which seems to have played animportant part in international law.

Looking for further information, we made severalcombinations of names on Google.

Marshall and Girard gave us Marshall Girard, a man living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where heestablished an extraordinary Museum of International Folk Art.

Marshall turned out to be the son of Alexander Girard, the most famous textile designer of the 20thcentury. Wikipedia says that Alexander

“was born in New York City to an American mother from Boston and a French-Italian father. He wasraised in Florence, Italy.”

We then discovered that Alexander had a brother, Giancarlo, who had stayed in Italy, working as a

multi-faceted artist. Teaching ceramics, among others, to the current president of the Fierucola marketin Santo Spirito.

Yet another fascinating spin-off of our ludoteca. But even spin-offs have their spin-offs, as we foundthat Carlo-Matteo Girard had, at one point, owned a pension, the Pension Girard, in Via Montebello 5,which André Gide would describe in L'Ecole des femmes:

Recent years

In the 1950's, Egisto Nidiaci officially donated most of the garden to the Municipality, though we maydoubt he had the legal right to; he kept a claim to the rest of the property, though in fact it stayed purelyin public use, as an asilo or kindergarten until about 1980, then as a laboratory for young people andfinally as a ludoteca, while the floor above was a day-time centre for the old people of San Frediano,and parts were given over to public housing for the poor.

On the scene, there appeared entrepreneur Salvatore Leggiero, who claims he began his career sellingencyclopaedias and then had the luck of befriending Marcello Dell'Utri (currently in jail for “concorsoesterno in associazione di tipo mafioso”); after which he began to buy up some of the most expensiveand significant properties of Florence.

In 2008, he bought the claims of the last of the Nidiaci over the area, and – as we have seen – started tobuild luxury flats in the building. On the company website, there appears this picture of how theydream to transform what had once been the garden of the camellias:

The families of San Frediano were not so easily put down.

They opened the public part of the garden to the children, began investigating the history of the areaand organized a series of demonstrations behind the traditional flag of the rione, the Green Dragon.

In 2014, a pool of lawyers gathered all the documents needed for the City of Florence to claim back fullpossession of the area.

However, the town government replied that legal proceedings, though quite reasonable would be long,and decided instead to grant Leggiero full rights to transform the ludoteca into apartments and thegarden into a parking lot, in exchange for his paying for a small building in the public area of thegarden.

In June 2016, the Court of Audit of Tuscany opened proceedings to investigate whether theMunicipality had harmed public assets by not defending the area.