Jacopo Soldani and the “Tirsi”, poetry, heresy and the ‘bella vita’ on the hills of Antella…

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About the various owners who have succeeded over time have arisen some legends which, however, bear some truth. It seems that Bartolomea Nasi was the mistress of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who went to meet her every night.

It was also said that the restless ghost of Bobò – in life, the nasty Luisa Boboli, who died in 1883 – would wander through the streets at night terrorizing the few passers-by and would enter the homes of peasants to take the covers off pots and pans. One of the keepers was Il Brignola, a strange man who claimed to be an inventor, but would always end up the victim of hilarious episodes.
Along the dirt road in the middle of woods from S. Donato in Collina to Montisoni, we find Villa Belvedere in Pian de’ Mazzuoli, the ancient possession of the Soldani and the pleasant and habitual holiday resort of Jacopo (1579-1641), poet, satirist, Senator, physicist, mathematician and astronomer.
Under the pseudonym Tirsi, he was one of the founders and the most active and ardent members of the Arcadia of the Antellese Pastors (Arcadia dei Pastori Antellesi): a happy brigade which gathered writers, scientists and lovers of the good life in the villas around Antella in a mythical return to simple and primitive nature.
He was among the “Florentine schoolchildren and gentlemen disciples of Galileo.” In fact, he followed his lectures at the University of Pisa along with other Antellese pastors such as Piero de’ Bardi, Jacopo Giraldi and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger. Besides these there was also the Pastor Maffeo Barberini who, amongst other things, had shared the room with his friend Buonarroti as a young student in Pisa. But it was he who, when he became Pope Urban VIII, issued his severe condemnation and confinement of Galileo at the Villa di Arcetri for his Copernican ideas.
Of course, Soldani and other friends tried to defend him against accusations of heresy, but there was nothing they could do. However, at scientific meetings – more or less secret – which took place in their houses, they continued to spread and develop the revolutionary theories of the great scientist, even if they were contrary to the religious dogma of the time.
As a writer, Soldani wrote the famous Seven Satires which the Accademia della Crusca placed amongst the poetic masterpieces of Italy. They were composed between 1620 and 1623 during stays at Villa Belvedere and were published for the first time in 1751, more than a hundred years after the death of its author.
The work is a satire against the extravagances and vices of the society of his time, against hypocrisy, luxury, avarice and the inconstancy of human desires. In the Seventh Satire, the one against luxury and avarice and directed to Monsignor Francesco Venturi, who was in his villa in Belmonte, he described the sweet refuge of Belvedere and its favorable climatic position where there is ‘a sweet and gentle aura and here always blows a temperate April’ and panoramic views because it has ‘mountains surrounding every direction and at the end of a gorge opens a scene, the richest you could ever see.”

Massimo Casprini

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