(Florence 1313- Certaldo, Florence 1375). One of the most prominent men of letters of all times, he anticipated the humanistic tendencies of the 1400s. Boccaccio was the illegitimate son of a merchant from Florence where he was raised.

In 1327 he moved to Naples where he joined mundane circles and was involved in the cultural life of the city at the court of the Angiò. There he met Fiammetta (a probable illegitimate daughter of the king) to whom he dedicated some of his works. He was captured by French literature of court and chivalry, and also focused on the study of Latin culture, history, mythology and literature. Upon his return home he met Francesco Petrarca whom he admired and considered a great maestro of literature. The two writers remained friends until their death.

In the early 1370 he retired to his home in Certaldo near Florence, where he lived a solitary life exclusively dedicating himself to his studies and religious meditation. Boccaccio’s most famous work is the “Decameron” which he began in 1349 and finished in 1351. It is a collection of 100 tales told by a group of friends who had retreated into a villa in the outskirts of Florence to flee the plague of 1348.

The “Decameron” represents the first and greatest masterpieces of Italian prose, especially for the number and variety of the tales. Bocaccio turned to many sources in writing of his book: Latin and Greek classics, French fabliau, popular literature including traditional fables, short stories and the various translations of “One Thousand and One Nights”. His lesser works include “La Commedia Delle Ninfe Fiorentine” (1341-42) of Arcadian and pastoral genre, “Ninfale Fiesolano” (1345-46) an idyllic poem on the founding of Florence, and “Corbaccio” (1365) Boccaccio’s last work in which the topic of love becomes a satiric attack against women probably fuelled by a non-requited senile love.

Boccaccio also produced an idealized portrait of Dante (“Trattatello in Laude di Dante”) and a comment on the “Divine Comedy”. Boccaccio left animmense literary heritage not only in Italy with his prose which Pietro Bembo set as an example to imitate in “Prose della Volgar Lingua” (1525), but also abroad – the “Decameron” inspired Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales (1387-1389).