Like many other Florentine merchant families, in the Middle Ages the Corsi family settled in Florence, where they built their economic and social fortunes, eventually holding the highest offices in the city. In the sixteenth century, they carried out an important series of property and land investments with the great wealth they had accumulated. In 1503, in the parish of San Martino a Sesto, in an area filled with streams and flourishing crops, Simone di Jacopo Corsi purchased from Andrea di Luca Carnesecchi, for the considerable sum of 1680 florins, an estate with a “manor house” and a farm worker’s house, a walled garden, a dovecote and about 10 hectares of land.
In the centuries that followed, the Corsi family considerably increased the number of farms, lands and estates, creating a vast and profitable farm of which the Villa has always been the management centre, as well as a place of rest and relaxation for the family.
The Camerino delle Grottesche (Chamber of the Grotesques)
A small chamber located in the heart of the Villa contains an exceptionally well-preserved frescoed vault with elaborate grotesques dating back to 1582–85, which only after extensive archival research could be attributed to the Florentine Tommaso di Battista del Verrocchio, a painter who was involved in important projects connected to the Medici. In the apparent chaos of the decoration, a precise order shows ancient gods, sphinxes, harpies, satyrs and gargoyles prancing around two landscape views which are of great importance in the history of the estate. One of these depicts the original Villa Corsi during the Renaissance and the other the courtyard with the Miseno Fountain and the lost statue by Stoldo Lorenzi, who was one of the main sculptors of the Boboli Gardens. Because of the extravagance of the decorations the small room has for centuries been nicknamed the Camerino delle Streghe (Witches’ Chamber).
The Villa in the Sixteenth Century
The view of the Villa that Tommaso di Battista del Verrocchio depicted on the ceiling of the Camerino delle Grottesche is an extremely important image. Pictured in the frame in the middle of the grotesques is a typical “manor house” of the time, its large size resulting from a series of additions of rooms. One can see the defensive tower, which has become a dovecote (pigeon breeding was a very profitable activity on this farm, and was carried on for many centuries), the covered terrace with sandstone columns where agricultural products were dried and clothes hung out to dry, the Renaissance windows with sandstone surrounds, and the large door to the garden framed by ashlars. The front garden is already laid out architecturally with lawn partitions and the first pool with a fountain.