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Giovanni Boccaccio (1313
– 21 December 1375) was an Italian author and poet, a friend and
correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author
of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and
his poetry in the Italian vernacular. Boccaccio is particularly notable for
his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude
that of just about all of his contemporaries, since they were medieval
writers and often followed formulaic models for character and plot.
Biography
The exact details of his birth are uncertain. A number of sources state
that he was born in Paris and that his mother was a Parisian, but others
deprecate this as a romanticism by the earliest biographers. In this case
his birthplace was possibly in Tuscany, perhaps in Certaldo, the town of
his father. . He was the son of a Florentine merchant and an unknown woman
to whom he was almost certainly not married.
Early
life
Boccaccio grew up in Florence. His father was working for the Compagnia dei
Bardi and in the 1320s married Margherita dei Mardoli, of an illustrious
family. It is believed Boccaccio was tutored by Giovanni Mazzuoli and
received from him an early introduction to the works of Dante. In 1326
Boccaccio moved to Naples with the family when his father was appointed to
head the Neapolitan branch of his bank. Boccaccio was apprenticed to the
bank, but it was a trade for which he had no affinity. He eventually
persuaded his father to let him study law at the Studium in the city. For
the next six years Boccaccio studied canon law there. Then from there he
pursued his interest in scientific and literary studies.
His father introduced him
to the Neapolitan nobility and the French-influenced court of Robert the
Wise in the 1330s. At this time he fell in love with a married daughter of
Robert the Wise (known as, King Robert of Naples) and she is immortalized
as the character "Fiammetta" in many of Boccaccio's prose
romances, particularly Filocolo (1338). Boccaccio became a friend of fellow
Florentine Niccolò Acciaioli, and benefited from his influence as
administrator and, perhaps, the lover of Catherine of Valois-Courtenay,
widow of Philip I of Taranto. Acciaioli later became counsellor to Queen
Joanna and, eventually, her Grand Seneschal.
It seems Boccaccio
enjoyed law no more than banking, but his studies allowed him the
opportunity to study widely and make good contacts with fellow scholars.
His early influences included Paolo da Perugia (a curator and author of a
collection of myths, the Collectiones), the humanists Barbato da Sulmona
and Giovanni Barrili, and the theologian Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro.
Mature
years
In Naples, Boccaccio began what he considered his true vocation, poetry.
Works produced in this period include Filostrato and Teseida (the source
for Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale respectively),
Filocolo, a prose version of an existing French romance, and La caccia di
Diana, a poem in octave rhyme listing Neapolitan women. The period featured
considerable formal innovation, including possibly the introduction of the
Sicilian octave to Florence, where it influenced Petrarch.
Boccaccio returned to
Florence in early 1341, avoiding the plague in that city of 1340, but also
missing the visit of Petrarch to Naples in 1341. He had left Naples due to
tensions between the Angevin king and Florence. His father had returned to
Florence in 1338, where he had gone bankrupt. His mother died shortly
afterward. Although dissatisfied with his return to Florence, Boccaccio
continued to work, producing Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine (also known as
Ameto) a mix of prose and poems, in 1341, completing the fifty canto
allegorical poem Amorosa visione in 1342, and Fiammetta in 1343 The
pastoral piece Ninfale fiesolano probably dates from this time also. In
1343 Boccaccio's father re-married, to Bice del Bostichi. His children by
his first marriage had all died (except Boccaccio) but he had another son,
Iacopo, in 1344.
In Florence, the
overthrow of Walter of Brienne brought about the government of popolo
minuto. It diminished the influence of the nobility and the wealthier
merchant classes and assisted in the relative decline of Florence. The city
was hurt further, in 1348, by the Black Death, later represented in the
Decameron, which killed some three-quarters of the city's population.
From 1347 Boccaccio spent
much time in Ravenna, seeking new patronage, and despite his claims, it is
not certain whether he was present in plague-ravaged Florence. His
stepmother died during the epidemic and his father, as Minister of Supply
in the city was closely associated with the government efforts. His father died
in 1349 and as head of the family Boccaccio was forced into a more active
role.
Boccaccio began work on
the Decameron around 1349. It is probable that the structures of many of
the tales date from earlier in his career, but the choice of a hundred tales
and the frame-story lieta brigata of three men and seven women dates from
this time. The work was largely complete by 1352. It was Boccaccio's final
effort in literature and one of his last works in Italian, the only other
substantial work was Corbaccio (dated to either 1355 or 1365). Boccaccio
revised and rewrote the Decameron in 1370-1371. This manuscript has
survived to the present day.
From 1350 Boccaccio,
although less of a scholar, became closely involved with Italian humanism
and also with the Florentine government. His first official mission was to
Romagna in late 1350. He revisited that city-state twice and also was sent
to Brandenburg, Milan, and Avignon. He also pushed for the study of Greek,
housing Barlaam of Calabria, and encouraging his tentative translations of
works by Homer, Euripides, and Aristotle.
In October 1350 he was
delegated to greet Francesco Petrarca as he entered Florence and also to
have the great man as a guest at his home during his stay. The meeting
between the two was extremely fruitful and they were friends from then on,
Boccaccio calling Petrarch his teacher and magister. Petrarch at that time
encouraged Boccaccio to study classical Greek and Latin literature. They
met again in Padua in 1351, Boccaccio on an official mission to invite
Petrarch to take a chair at the university in Florence. Although
unsuccessful, the discussions between the two were instrumental in
Boccaccio writing the Genealogia deorum gentilium; the first edition was
completed in 1360 and this would remain one of the key reference works on
classical mythology for over 400 years. The discussions also formalized
Boccaccio's poetic ideas. Certain sources also see a conversion of
Boccaccio by Petrarch from the open humanist of the Decameron to a more
ascetic style, closer to the dominant fourteenth century ethos. For
example, he followed Petrarch (and Dante) in the unsuccessful championing
of an archaic and deeply allusive form of Latin poetry. In 1359 following a
meeting with Pope Innocent VI and further meetings with Petrarch it is
probable that Boccaccio took some kind of religious mantle. There is a
persistent, but unsupported, tale that he repudiated his earlier works,
including the Decameron, in 1362, as profane.
In 1360 Boccaccio began
work on De mulieribus claris, a book offering biographies of one hundred
and six famous women, that he completed in 1374. Two centuries later,
approximately in 1541, this work was translated into the German language by
Heinrich Steinhowel and printed by Johannes Zainer, in Ulm, Germany. The
secondary title caption, a subtitle, of the German translation reads Hie
nach volget der kurcz sin von etlichen frowen / von denen johannes
boccacius in latin beschriben hat, vnd doctor hainricus stainhöwel
getütschet.
Following the failed coup
of 1361, a number of Boccaccio's close friends and other acquaintances were
executed or exiled in the subsequent purge. Although not directly linked to
the conspiracy, it was in this year that Boccaccio left Florence to reside
in Certaldo, and became less involved in government affairs. He did not
undertake further missions for Florence until 1365, and traveled to Naples
and then on to Padua and Venice, where he met up with Petrarch in grand
style at Palazzo Molina, Petrarch's residence as well as the place of
Petrarch's library. He later then returned to Certaldo. He met Petrarch
only once again, in Padua in 1368. Upon hearing of the death of Petrarch
(July 19, 1374), Boccaccio wrote a commemorative poem, including it in his
collection of lyric poems, the Rime.
He returned to work for
the Florentine government in 1365, undertaking a mission to Pope Urban V.
When the papacy returned to Rome from Avignon in 1367, Boccaccio was again
sent to Urban, offering congratulations. He also undertook diplomatic
missions to Venice and Naples.
Of his later works the
moralistic biographies gathered as De casibus virorum illustrium (1355-74)
and De mulieribus claris (1361-1375) were most significant. Other works
include a dictionary of geographical allusions in classical literature, De
montibus, silvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, stagnis seu paludibus, et
de nominibus maris liber (a title desperate for the coining of the word
"geography"). He gave a series of lectures on Dante at the Santo
Stefano church in 1373 and these resulted in his final major work, the
detailed Esposizioni sopra la Commedia di Dante. Boccaccio and Petrarch,
also were two of the most educated people in early Renaissance in the field
of archaeology.
Boccaccio's change in writing
style in the 1350s was not due just to meeting with Petrarch. It was mostly
due to poor health and a premature weakening of his physical strength. It
also was due to disappointments in love. Some such disappointment could
explain why Boccaccio, having previously written always in praise of women
and love, came suddenly to write in a bitter Corbaccio style. Petrarch
describes how Pietro Petrone (a Carthusian monk) on Boccaccio's death bed
sent another Carthusian (Gioacchino Ciani) to urge him to renounce his
worldly studies. Petrarch then dissuaded Boccaccio from burning his own
works and selling off his personal library, letters, books, and
manuscripts. Petrarch even offered to purchase Boccaccio's library, so that
it would become part of Petrarch's library.
His final years were
troubled by illnesses, some relating to obesity and what often is described
as dropsy, severe edema that would be described today as congestive heart
failure. He died at the age of sixty-three in Certaldo on 21 December,
1375, where he is buried.
Children
Boccaccio never married but had three children. Mario and Giulio were born
in the 1330s. In the 1340s Violante was born in Ravenna, where Boccaccio
was a guest of Ostasio I da Polenta from about 1345 through 1346.
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