Marco Santagata’s biography of fourteenth-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio opens not with an anecdote from Boccaccio’s childhood (although the chapter bears the title “A Boy in Florence”) nor with his most famous literary work, the Decameron. Rather, Santagata begins at the end of Boccaccio’s life, invoking a quote from the Rime, lyric poems in which the writer describes himself as no longer a man but “a wineskin full, oh not of wind, but of most grievous lead” (“un otre non pien di vento, ma di piombo grave.”) The weightiness (pun intended) of this opening permeates not just the initial pages of Santagata’s book but its telling of Boccaccio’s life as a whole. From the outset, Santagata paints Boccaccio as a man with “problematic character traits” (4) who is “introverted, full of anxieties, suspicious, and, it seems, exceedingly touchy” (5); even his positive qualities—curiosity, versatility, adaptability—betray deep insecurities. If the reader hopes for an endearing portrait of the author, this might not be it.
The original Italian subtitle of the book, “Fragilità di un genio” (“Fragility of a genius”), reflects Santagata’s assessment of Boccaccio’s character and intellect. But the English subtitle, “a biography,” insinuates that the reader will find a more objective take on the subject matter. In a way, the subtitle and cover blurbs announce Boccaccio: A Biography as not simply a biography but the biography of Boccaccio. In fact, this translation by Emlyn Eisenach is the first comprehensive English-language biography of Boccaccio to appear in nearly a century (others include John Addington Symonds [1895], Edward Hutton [1910], Thomas Caldecott Chubb [1930]). As a leading scholar of Dante and Petrarch and a distinguished novelist, Santagata has already experimented with life-writing in Dante: Il romanzo della sua vita (Mondadori 2012), published in English as Dante: The Story of His Life (Belknap 2016). Boccaccio: A Biography furtherconfirms Santagata’s ability to deftly weave archival evidence, literary analysis, and historical context into a coherent life story. The Anglophone reader will especially benefit from Santagata’s synthesis and distillation of information otherwise dispersed across myriad sources in Italian and Latin. Even experts on Boccaccio may be pleased to find such a wealth of information in a single volume.
Boccaccio: A Biography unfolds chronologically—despite the intrusion of the elder Boccaccio’s words on the first page—and consists of three parts: Youth, Maturity, Old Age. Each part is divided into chapters which are then divided into subsections. While these subsections are not strictly necessary, they are undoubtedly a useful apparatus for students or non-specialists to orient themselves amidst the book’s abundant detail. For the ever-curious reader (or researcher), Santagata supplies robust endnotes with further quotations from Boccaccio’s works, additional historical particulars, and suggestions for further reading.
Part I: Youth (1313-1340) reconstructs Boccaccio’s boyhood, adolescence, and early adult years. Santagata establishes that Boccaccio was born in Certaldo or Florence and that he was educated in the Florentine school system, following a track intended for merchants rather than scholars. Around the age of 14, Boccaccio moved to Naples where, per his father’s wishes, he undertook an apprenticeship with the powerful Bardi company. In Naples, Boccaccio would come into contact with one of the most important courts in Europe, that of King Robert of Anjou. Santagata illuminates the impact the Neapolitan environment had on Boccaccio’s early writings, such as Caccia di Diana and Il Filocolo, noting his innovative tendency “to bring together high culture and pleasure reading” (23). A number of pages are dedicated to the figure of Fiammetta who may be a senhal for a certain Maria, possibly a natural daughter of King Robert. The historical evidence for such a Maria is sparse, and here Santagata draws on arguments elaborated in his previous work Boccaccio indiscreto. Il mito di Fiammetta (Il Mulino, 2019).
Part II: Maturity (1341-1360) commences with Boccaccio’s return to his father’s home in Florence. This period in Boccaccio’s life is an active one as he travels across the Italian peninsula, participates in diplomatic missions, and writes numerous works, including his vernacular masterpiece, the Decameron. At the heart of this section is the friendship between Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca. Santagata depicts the rapport between the two as one of student and master, respectively, echoing a common understanding of their relationship. Boccaccio’s choice to write in Latin, or his so-called “moral turn,” is often attributed to his encounter with the Petrarch. An ambivalence, however, arises as Santagata discusses their scholarly exchange. On the one hand, Santagata suggests that Boccaccio “perhaps did not even understand the fundamental methodological principle that Petrarch placed at the heart of new humanistic culture” (155). On the other, he argues that “Boccaccio’s restriction of himself to the role of pupil...was a kind of false modesty” (156), since Boccaccio actually dreamt of undertaking an intellectual project that would synthesize the vernacular tradition represented by Dante and Petrarch’s Latinate Humanism. Whatever the case, the two men clearly shared a profound, life-altering friendship.
In the final part of his life, Old Age (1361-1375), Boccaccio faces political, familial, and financial turmoil. Nevertheless, he continues to write, including copying and revising the Decameron, as well as drafting De mulieribus claris [On Famous Women], a collection of biographies of women which would become one of his most popular works throughout the early modern period. Boccaccio also embarks on the public reading and commentating of Dante’s Commedia in the Church of Santo Spirito in Florence. Santagata illuminates how, given Bocaccio’s desire “to have Dante recognized as the greatest glory of Florentine culture” (276), this would have been a great victory for him. Yet the story ends as it began, on a somber note, with Boccaccio’s lament of having become a “wineskin full of lead,” lines written shortly before his death and that of his dear friend, Petrarch.
While Eisenach offers a faithful translation of Santagata’s text, a brief translator’s or editor’s introduction could have provided valuable context for a non-specialist Anglophone reader. Santagata writes for a public that has likely studied Boccaccio in high school and knows, at a minimum, the contours of Italian history. But an Anglophone reader may not grasp even the basics: that medieval Italy was not unified during Boccaccio’s lifetime or that Dante was the first to use the Florentine dialect (today’s standard Italian) as a literary language. This lack of contextualization may limit who can easily access the content of this biography. Regardless, Boccaccio: A Biography sketches a compelling portrait of a literary genius who was also merely human—a condition with which any reader can empathize.