Giovanni Boccaccio
June 16, 1313 – September 21, 1375
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet and important representative of early Renaissance humanism. His main work, the Decamerone, comprising one hundred novellas, portrays the multifaceted society of the 14th century and makes him the founder of the prose narrative tradition in Europe.
The exact circumstances of his birth are not certain. Boccaccio was born in 1313, probably in Florence or in the nearby mountain village of Certaldo, as the illegitimate son of the merchant Boccaccio di Chellino. His mother died shortly after giving birth. Later, the unproven legend that he was born in Paris, the result of a relationship between his father and a French noblewoman named Giovanna, which is cited in many sources and also promoted by himself, emerged.
As a child, he lived in Florence in the house of his father, who worked for the Compagnia dei Bardi, a banking company. While still a teenager - around fourteen years old - he was sent to Naples to work in a branch of the Compagnia dei Bardi to practise his trade as a merchant.
The years spent in Naples (until 1340) had a great influence on Boccaccio's personal and intellectual development. Instead of devoting himself entirely to the study of commerce or canon law, as his father had wanted, he devoted himself to his passion for literature. He gained access to the Neapolitan court of Robert of Anjou, where he became acquainted with the elegant courtly lifestyle, socialised with intellectuals and acquired a wide-ranging education.
His first works in verse and prose were also written during this period, in which Boccaccio experimented with different genres and styles (among others, Filocolo, written between 1336 and 1338, is considered one of the first prose novels in the vernacular and bears witness to his extensive knowledge). In keeping with the taste of the time, he created the recurring image of an ideal lover, whom he called Fiammetta and whose real-life model was probably a Neapolitan noblewoman named Maria d'Aquino.
He returned to Florence in 1340. Due to financial difficulties, he entered the civil service and held several offices. Between 1345 and 1346 he went to the court of Ostasio da Polenta in Ravenna, while the following year he was in the service of Francesco Ordelaffi in Forlì. The bourgeois urban environment, very different from courtly life, was an important source of inspiration for his prolific literary activity in that decade, which culminated in the Decamerone, written in the years following the plague epidemic that struck Italy in 1348.
However, his masterpiece was certainly already complete when he first met Francesco Petrarca in the autumn of 1350. Boccaccio formed a deep friendship with him. They both shared an admiration for classical authors, as evidenced by their correspondence in which they exchanged literary experiences.
Now that his fame had grown, the Florentine city council entrusted him with various diplomatic assignments, which took him on many journeys. During these years, Boccaccio - also influenced by his friend Petrarch - devoted himself increasingly to his study of classical texts. Around 1355, he was granted free access to the library of Montecassino, where many masterpieces from antiquity had survived the ages. Boccaccio even copied some of the precious codices in his own hand, as can be read in his surviving notebooks (the so-called Zibaldoni).
After Boccaccio began studying Greek around 1360, he arranged for the first chair of Greek to be established in Florence. This was awarded to Leontius Pilatus, to whom Boccaccio also entrusted the translation of the Iliad and Homer's Odyssey into Latin. These works could thus be read by a much wider audience.
His interest in antiquity also influenced his literary production towards the end of his life. In the later years of his life, he wrote fewer narrative texts in Volgare, but more works that dealt with encyclopaedic or philological topics in Latin.
This change may also be due to a religious crisis in Boccaccio's life. It is said to have been so profound that Boccaccio even wanted to destroy some of his works, which he now considered immoral. However, he was restrained by Petrarch. This account is called into question by the fact that he was still producing copies of his Decamerone in his own hand around 1370. He had already entered the minor clergy in 1360, albeit probably due to financial hardship. Finally, in 1362, he met the Carthusian monk Gioachino Cianni from Siena, who converted Boccaccio to a ‘pious life’. In 1373, he was commissioned by the city of Florence to publicly read, explain and comment on the Divina Commedia, having already fuelled the cult of Dante Alighieri twenty years earlier with his biography of Dante. In 1374, however, his health deteriorated due to probable hydropsia and so he had to discontinue this activity. He only got as far as the beginning of the 17th canto of the Inferno.
He finally settled in Certaldo and worked on several works until his death on 21 December 1375.