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Bargello and at the Louvre), were taken from the first collection of Scala’s Latin Apologues, short compositions through which, using satirical and mythological themes with a crude and direct style, the author intended to impart his teachings. The rough fascination which emanates from them, after the recent restoration, marries with the many emblematic figures: from the child “protected” by Poverty while both look toward Mercury, to the figure of Apollo in whom the features of Lorenzo the Magnificent are recognizable. In 1480, when Scala had already settled permanently in the house in Borgo Pinti together with his wife, his five daughters and a large number of servants, Giuliano was born, the only male and sole heir of all his father’s properties.
The inheritance When Bartolomeo Scala died in 1497 the property passed to his son Giuliano. At that time the definitive aspect of the estate between Borgo Pinti and Via Cafaggio (now Via Gino Capponi) consisted of the domus that he himself had built and a considerable area of cultivated land, gardens and nurseries, in addition to various houses in Borgo Pinti that had been rented out to family relatives or servants. Giuliano Scala sold various external properties, some thirteen lots of the property adjacent to what would be Via del Mandorlo (now Via Giuseppe Giusti), obtaining in return over one thousand scudi that were legally declared... He then made out two wills, the second of which indicated preference to his son Lorenzo instead of Bartolomeo. Lorenzo never married, thus leaving as sole heir his other brother, Giulio, with a bequest in favour of his mother Francesca. To Bartolomeo there remained minor portions, destined to flow, through his daughters who were nuns, into the patrimony of the monastery of San Clemente. In view of Giulio’s uncertainties, it was his mother who later requested the appointment of a curator to manage the inheritance. At the time of his death in 1585 Giulio had no direct heirs. In a draft of his will he had indicated as sole heir the Ospedale degli Innocenti (the original owner of the property). However he later nominated as heirs his nieces Giulia Eletta, Maria Francesca and Contessa, the daughters of his deceased brother Bartolomeo. The three women, nuns at the monastery of San Clemente in Via San Gallo, were nevertheless obliged to sell for six thousand florins the Palazzo di Pinti with adjoining garden and other properties to Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici, at that time archbishop of Florence. The high prelate had two years to assert this pre-emption and sixteen years to pay back the debt, just as the will of Giulio Scala had clearly indicated that selling the property to Jacopo Salviati or to any other member of the same family was strictly forbidden.
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