Note 106 — Chapter I

Coats of arms. These ‘stemmi,’ as they are often called, are very familiar objects on the exterior of Tuscan palaces, and the arms of the Medici, six round balls or pellets, are constantly in evidence. In the view of the Fortress in Fig. 3 a ‘stemma’ of the Medici is to be seen displayed on the face of the wall. It is referred to by Vasari, Opere, ed. Milanesi, IV, 544. Mariotti, La Legislazione delle Belle Arti, Roma, 1892, p. 245, has printed an interesting edict of the year 1571, in Tuscany, designed to protect these memorials of the ancient Florentine families. The memory of those who built the houses, it says, ‘is preserved and perpetuated by their Arms, Insignia, Titles, Inscriptions, which are affixed or painted or carved or suspended over the doors, arches, windows, projecting angles or other places where they are conspicuously to be seen,’ and the edict, re-enacting older regulations, reminds the citizens that no one who purchases or becomes possessed of an old house on which there are insignia of the kind is allowed to remove or in any way deface them. No new owner is to presume to add his own arms or other memorial by the side of the old ones of the founder and constructor of the house. Only in cases where these are absent may the new owner put up his own insignia. This regulation shows a historical sense and a care for the tangible memorials of a city’s past which have been too often lacking in more modern times. No doubt it is due to its enforcement that so many of these ‘stemmi’ are left to add interest to the somewhat modernized streets of the Florence of to-day.