Boccaccio’s feelings and mode of life. A Carthusian monk came to him one
day, and stated that father Petroni of Sienna, a monk of the same order,
who had died not long before in the odour of sanctity, had commissioned
him to exhort Boccaccio to forsake his studies, reform his loose life,
and prepare for death. To prove the truth of his mission, he revealed
several secrets, known only to Boccaccio and Petrarch, to both of whom
both the monks were totally unknown. Terrified at this mysterious
communication, Boccaccio wrote to Petrarch, expressing his resolution to
comply with the advice, and shut himself up in a Carthusian cloister.
Petrarch’s answer, which may be found among his Latin epistles, is full
of sound sense. He tells his friend, that though this disclosure of
secrets, supposed to be unknown to any living soul, appeared a mystery,
yet “there is such a thing as artifice in imposture which may at times
assume the language of supernatural inspiration; that those who practise
arts of this kind examine attentively the age, the aspect, the looks,
the habits of the man they mean to delude, his theories, his motions,
his voice, his conversation, his feelings, and opinions: and from all
these derive their oracles.” He adds, that as to the prediction of
approaching death, there was no occasion for a message from the next
world to say, that a man past the middle age, and infirm of body, could
not expect to have many years to live: and, in conclusion, advises his
friend to tranquillize his imagination, and to avail himself of the
warning towards leading a more regular life; retaining at the same time
his liberty, his house, and his library, and making a good use even of
the heathen authors in the latter, as many holy men, and the fathers of
the church themselves, had done before him. This letter restored
Boccaccio to reason. He gave up his intention of retiring from the
world, and contented himself with assuming the ecclesiastical dress; and
being admitted to the first gradation of holy orders, he adopted a
regular and studious course of life, and turned his attention to the
study of the Scriptures.
About the following year he again visited Naples, but he was disgusted
by the neglect which he experienced; and, in 1363, he went to Venice,
and abode three months with Petrarch. He was sent twice, in 1365 and
1367, to Pope Urban V. upon affairs of the republic. In 1373, the
Florentines determined to appoint a lecturer to explain the Divina
Commedia of Dante, much of which was even then obscure or unintelligible
without the aid of a comment. Boccaccio was chosen for this honourable
office, with the annual stipend of one hundred florins. He had long and
deeply studied, and knew by heart almost the whole of that sublime poem,
which he had several times transcribed. He left his written comment on
the Inferno, and also a life of Dante, both of which have been published
among his works. But illness interrupted his lectures, and induced him
to resort again to his favourite country residence at Certaldo. A
disorder of the stomach, aggravated by intense application, terminated
his existence, Dec. 21, 1375, at the age of sixty-two. He was buried in
the parish church of Certaldo, and the following modest inscription,
which he had himself composed, was placed over his tomb:—
“Hac sub mole jacent cineres ac ossa Johannis.
Mens sedet ante Deum, meritis ornata laborum
Mortalis vitæ. Genitor Bocchaccius illi,
Patria Certaldum, studium fuit alma poesis.”
A monument was also raised to him in the same church, with an
inscription by Coluccio Salutati, secretary to the republic, an intimate
friend of the deceased. This monument was restored, in 1503, by Tedaldo,
Podestà, or justice, of Certaldo, who placed another inscription under
the bust of the deceased. The republic of Florence, in 1396, voted
monuments to be raised in their capital to Boccaccio, Dante, and
Petrarch, but this resolution was not carried into effect.
By a will, which was dated the year preceding that of his death, and
which is published among his Latin works, Boccaccio constituted his two
nephews, the sons of his brother Jacopo, his heirs. His library he left
to his confessor, Father Martin of Signa, an Augustin friar, whom he
also appointed his executor, directing, that after the father’s death it
should revert to the convent of Santo Spirito at Florence, for the use
of students. A fire which broke out in the convent, in the year 1471,
destroyed this valuable collection, which had cost the proprietor so
many years of labour and care, and in which he had expended the greater
part of his patrimony. Boccaccio having, in his book _De Genealogia
Deorum_, quoted several ancient authors whose works have not reached us,
it is supposed that some of these must have been included in the
catastrophe that befel his library. He has been accused, however, of
quoting fictitious authors in this treatise.
Boccaccio’s private character was stained by licentiousness. Besides his
Fiammetta, he had several mistresses whom he mentions in his Ameto. A
natural daughter, whose name was Violante, he lost while she was an
infant, and he mourns over her in his eclogues under the name of
Olympia. He had also an illegitimate son who survived him, but who is
not mentioned in his testament.
In the latter years of his life, Boccaccio was poor, though not in
absolute want, and his friend Petrarch, who died little more than one
year before him, left him by his will fifty golden florins, “to buy him
a winter pelisse to protect him from cold while in his study at night,”
adding, that if he did no more for Boccaccio, it was not through want of
inclination but want of means. Boccaccio, on his part, had given
Petrarch several works copied by his own hand, among others, a Latin
translation of Homer, Dante, and some works of St. Augustine.
His modest dwelling at Certaldo, in which he died, still remains. The
Princes of the House of Medici protected it by affixing their armorial
ensigns on the outside, with an inscription. A Florentine lady, of the
name of Medici Lenzoni, purchased it in 1822, in order to preserve it
from dilapidation as a relic of departed genius. The appearance of the
house is exactly similar to the sketch given by Manni a century since,
in his life of Boccaccio. It is built of brick, according to the fashion
of the fourteenth century, with a square turret on one side of it
commanding a fine view of the surrounding hills; one of which is still
called by the country people, “the hill of Boccaccio,” from a tradition
that this was his favourite place of resort for meditation and study in
the summer heats. The grove which crowned its summit was cut down not
long ago. A curious circumstance is said by Professor Rosellini to have
happened some years before the purchase of the house by the Signora
Lenzoni. An old woman, who tenanted the premises, was busy weaving in a
small room next to the sitting apartment, when the repeated shaking of
her loom brought down part of the wall, and laid open a small recess
hollowed in the thickness of it, from which a large bundle of written
papers tumbled down. The old woman, through ignorance or superstition,
or both, thought it a pious duty to consign the whole of the MSS. to the
flames. Probably many interesting autographs of Boccaccio have thus been
lost.
Much has been said about Boccaccio’s tomb being “torn up and desecrated
by bigots;” and Lord Byron has made this the subject of his eloquent
invective. The story seems, however, to have originated in mistake.
Rosellini has given an authentic account of the whole transaction. It
appears that many years since, after a law had been passed by the Grand
Duke Leopold in 1783, forbidding the burial of the dead under church
pavements, the tomb of Boccaccio, which lay in the centre of the church
of St. James and St. Michael at Certaldo, covered by a stone bearing his
family escutcheon, his effigy, and the four lines above quoted, was
opened. Nothing was found, except a skull, and a tin tube containing
several written parchments, which the persons present could not
understand. What became of these is not known, perhaps they were
destroyed like the MSS. found by the old woman. The tombstone was
purchased by some one on the spot, and having since been broken, one
fragment alone remains, which the Signora Lenzoni has recovered and
placed inside Boccaccio’s house. All this is asserted in a notarial
document drawn up at Certaldo in 1825, and certified by ocular witnesses
then surviving, who were present at the opening of the vault. But,
besides this gravestone, there was a monument placed high on one of the
side-walls of the church, consisting of Boccaccio’s bust, which is a
good likeness, holding with both his arms against his breast a book, on
which is written ‘Decameron,’ and under the bust are the two
inscriptions by Salutati and Tedaldo, such as Manni transcribed them. To
this monument, and not to the tomb, Byron’s reproach partly applies, for
it was of late years removed by some fanatics from its place, and thrown
in a corner at the end of the church. But the authorities interfered and
caused it to be restored in a more conspicuous position, facing the
pulpit, where it is now to be seen.
Boccaccio wrote both in Latin and in Italian, in prose and in verse. His
Latin works are now mostly forgotten, although the author evidently
thought more of them than of his Italian novels. Petrarch fell into the
same mistake with regard to his own productions in both languages. The
language of the country, especially in prose composition, was then
esteemed below the dignity of learned men, and suited only to works of
recreation and amusement. Boccaccio wrote a book on mythology (De
Genealogia Deorum, lib. xv.) which he dedicated to Hugo, King of Cyprus
and Jerusalem, at whose request he had composed it. He acknowledges that
he had derived much information on the subject from Pietro Perugino,
librarian to King Robert of Naples, an assiduous inquirer after ancient
and especially Greek lore, and who had availed himself in his researches
of his intimacy with the Monk Barlaam, a learned Greek emigrant,
residing in Calabria. Boccaccio’s other Latin works are ‘De montium,
sylvarum, lacuum, fluviorum, stagnorum, et marium nominibus, liber,’ a
sort of gazetteer. ‘De casibus virorum et fæminarum illustrium, libri
ix.’ where he eloquently relates, in the last book, the tragic
catastrophe of the unfortunate Templars who were executed at Paris in
1310–14; at which his father was present. ‘De claris mulieribus
opus,’—and lastly, sixteen ‘Eclogæ,’ amounting to about three thousand
lines, which have been published with those of Petrarch and others at
Florence in 1504. Boccaccio left a key to the real personages of these
eclogues in a long letter written to the already-mentioned father Martin
of Signa. Both he and Petrarch allude in these poems to the vices and
corruptions of the Papal Court.
Of Boccaccio’s Italian works, the Decameron is that by which his memory
has been immortalized. This book consists of a series of tales, one
hundred in number, ten of which are told on each afternoon for ten
successive days, by a society of seven young women and three young men,
who having fled from the dangers of the plague which afflicted Florence
in 1348, assembled at a villa a short distance from the town. The
stories turn chiefly on amorous intrigues and devices, disappointments
and enjoyments, very broadly narrated; and can by no means be
recommended for indiscriminate perusal. They are admirably told, and are
full of wit and humour; but the pleasantry is for the most part of a
nature which modern manners cannot tolerate. There are, however, better
things than mere loose tales in the Decameron: several of the stories
are unexceptionable; some highly pathetic. They have furnished many
subjects for poetry, and especially for the drama; as, for instance, the
tale of Ginevra, the ninth of the second day, and the affecting story of
Griselda, the last of all. With regard to the merit of the invention, it
is true that some of Boccaccio’s tales are taken from the ‘Cento Novelle
Antiche,’ one of the oldest books in the Italian language. But the
greater number are original: and many refer to persons and events well
known in Italy, especially in Tuscany at that time, as is demonstrated
by Manni. The skill with which this multitude of tales is arranged and
brought forward, constitutes one of the chief merits of the work. It has
been remarked that out of a hundred introductions with which he prefaces
them, no two are alike. His narrative is clear; free from metaphors and
repetition; avoiding superfluity as well as monotony, and engaging
without tiring the attention. His descriptions, though minute, are
graceful and lively. Generally humorous, not to say broad, he can, at
pleasure, be pathetic; at pleasure, grave and dignified.
Here our praise of this celebrated work must stop. Of its indecencies we
have already spoken. The narrative, though clothed in decent words,
frequently runs in such a strain as no company of women above the lowest
grade of shame would now listen to, much less indulge in. Bad as this
is, a still deeper stain is to be found in the utter absence of all
moral principle, and callousness to all good feeling. Long planned
seduction, breach of hospitality, betrayal of friendship, all these are
painted as fortunate and spirited adventures, and as desirable objects
of attainment. Unlucky husbands are sneered at; jealousy of honour is
censured as stupidity or tyranny. Some of the female characters are even
worse than the male; and the world of the Decameron is one which no man
of common decency or honour could bear to live in. Boccaccio saw the
mischief he had done, and was sorry when it was too late. In a letter to
Mainardo de’ Cavalcanti, Marshal of Sicily, he entreated him not to
suffer the females of his family to read the Decameron; because,
“although education and honour would keep them above temptation, yet
their minds could not but be tainted by such obscene stories.”
He is fond of introducing monks and friars engaged in licentious
pursuits, and exposed to ludicrous and humiliating adventures. He also
at times speaks of the rites of the church in a profane or sarcastic
manner. From this it has been inferred that he was a sceptic or heretic.
The conclusion is erroneous. Like other wits of that ignorant,
superstitious, and debauched age, Boccaccio sneered, reviled, and yet
feared: and while he ridiculed the ministers and usages of the church,
he was employed in collecting relics, and ended his loose tales with
invocations of heaven and the saints. Besides, the secular clergy
themselves bore no love towards the monks and mendicant friars: they
were jealous of the former, and they hated and despised the latter. From
Dante down to Leo X. the dignitaries of the church spoke of friars in
terms nearly as opprobrious as Boccaccio himself. Leo made public jest
of them. Bembo, the secretary of Leo, and a cardinal himself, and Berni,
the secretary to several cardinals, give no more quarter to them than is
given in the Decameron. No wonder then that laymen should take similar
liberties, and that a friar should be regarded, as Ugo Foscolo observes,
as a sort of scape-goat for the sins of the whole clergy. These
considerations may explain how the Decameron went through several
editions, both at Venice and Florence, without attracting the censures
of the Court of Rome. The earliest editions bear the dates of 1471–2,
but these became extremely scarce, since the fanatic Savanarola had a
heap of them burnt in the public square of Florence in 1497. Of the
Valdarfer edition of 1471, only one copy is known to exist. This has
long been an object of interest to book collectors; and was purchased,
at the Roxburgh sale, by the Marquis of Blandford, for the enormous sum
of £2260. After the reformation in Germany, a more watchful censorship
was established, and the Decameron was placed in the list of proscribed
books. An expurgated edition however was allowed to appear, under the
_imprimatur_ of Pope Gregory XIII. in 1573, in which many passages
marked by the Inquisition were expunged, and laymen were made to take
the places of the clergy in the more indecorous adventures. The MS. from
which this and most of the subsequent editions are taken, was written by
Mannelli, the godson, and friend of Boccaccio, in 1384, nine years after
the author’s death. It is now in the Laurentian library at Florence.
Mannelli has copied scrupulously what he calls “the text,” whether an
autograph of Boccaccio, or an earlier copy, even to its errors and
omissions, noting from time to time in the margin “sic textus,” or
“deficiebat,” or “superfluum.” It may therefore be presumed that the
author had not put the last finish to his work.
Boccaccio began the Decameron soon after the plague of 1348, and seems
to have circulated the days, or parts, among his friends as he completed
them. He was a long time in completing the work, which he seems to have
laid aside, and resumed at leisure; and it is believed that he was eight
years employed upon it, and that he wrote the latter tales about 1356.
From that time he seems to have taken no more notice of it. He never
sent it to Petrarch, to whom he was in the habit of transmitting all his
other compositions; and it was only by accident, many years after, that
the poet saw a copy of it. This he mentions in one of his letters to
Boccaccio, and says that he “supposes it to be one of his juvenile
productions.” Petrarch praised only the description of the plague, and
the story of Griselda. This he translated into Latin.
Boccaccio’s other Italian prose works are ‘Il Filocopo,’ a prose
romance, written at the request of his Fiammetta. It is a dull
composition, far inferior to the Decameron in style, and displaying an
anomalous mixture of Christian and Pagan images and sentiments.
‘L’Amorosa Fiammetta’ is also a prose romance, in which the lady relates
her passion and grief for the absence of Pamfilo, by which name the
author is supposed to have designated himself. ‘Il Corbaccio,’ or the
‘Labyrinth of Love,’ in which he relates his adventures with a certain
widow, the same probably as he has introduced in the seventh tale of the
eighth day of the Decameron. ‘Ameto,’ a drama of mixed prose and verse.
‘Origine, vita, e costumi di Dante Alighieri,’ the life of Dante already
mentioned. Several letters remain, but the bulk of his correspondence is
lost. A life of Petrarch by Boccaccio, written originally in Latin, has
been recently discovered, and published in 1828 by Domenico Rossetti, of
Trieste.
Boccaccio wrote a quantity of Italian verse, of which he himself thought
little, after seeing those of Petrarch; and posterity has confirmed his
judgment. His Teseide, a heroic poem, in ottava rima, may be excepted.
This metre, generally adopted by the Italian epic and romantic poets, he
has the merit of having invented. Though imperfect, and little
attractive as an epic poem, the Teseide is not destitute of minor
beauties. Chaucer is indebted to it for his Knight’s Tale, remodelled by
Dryden under the name of Palamon and Arcite.
An edition of Boccaccio’s Italian prose works was printed at Naples,
with the date of Florence, in 1723–4, in 6 vols. 8vo.; but a better
edition has been lately published at Florence, corrected after the best
approved MSS. in 13 vols. 8vo. 1827–32.
The editions of the Decameron are almost innumerable. The best and most
recent ones are those of Poggiali, 1789–90, in 5 vols. 8vo.; that of
Ferrario, Milan, 1803; that of Colombo, Parma, 1812; all with copious
notes and comments; a small one by Molini, Florence, 1820; and the one
by Pickering, London, to which the late Ugo Foscolo prefixed an
elaborate and interesting historical dissertation. Domenico Maria Manni
wrote a ‘History of the Decameron,’ Florence, 1742, in which he has
collected a store of curious information concerning that work and its
author.
The principal biographers of Boccaccio are Filippo Villani, who may be
considered as a contemporary of our author; Giannozzo Mannetti,
Francesco Sansovino, Giuseppe Betussi, Count Mazzuchelli, and lastly,
the Count G. Battista Baldelli, who published a new life of Boccaccio in
1806 at Florence.
[Illustration: [Scene from the Introduction to the Decameron, after a
design by Stothard.]]
[Illustration]
CLAUDE.
Claude Gelée, commonly called Claude Lorraine, was born in 1600, at the
village of Chamagne in Lorraine, of very indigent parents. He was
apprenticed to a pastry-cook; but at the end of his term of service,
whether from disgust at his employment, desire of change, or perhaps
influenced by the love of art, he engaged himself as a domestic to some
young painters who were going to Italy. On arriving at Rome he was
employed as a colour-grinder by Agostino Tassi, an artist then in high
repute whose landscapes are spirited and free, and particularly
distinguished by the taste displayed in the architectural
accompaniments. Tassi first induced him to try his abilities in
painting. His earliest essays were implicit imitations of his master’s
manner, and evinced no symptom of original genius; perhaps even in his
matured style some indications of Tassi’s influence may be traced. He
continued, as opportunity occurred, to exercise his pencil, obtaining
little notice and still less reward. By degrees however he succeeded
sufficiently to venture on giving up his menial employment; and having
acquired from Tassi a tolerable expertness in the mechanical part of his
profession, he appears from thenceforth to have given little attention
to the works of other painters, relying on his own discernment and
diligent observation of nature. Many years elapsed, however, before the
talents of Claude reached their full maturity, whence his biographers
have inferred that he owed his excellence rather to industry than
genius: as if such excellence were within the reach of mere application.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by W. Holl._
CLAUDE.
_From the original
in the Musée Royale, Paris._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East._
]
He drew with indefatigable diligence, both from antique sculpture and
from the living model, but to little purpose; and he was so conscious of
his incapacity, that he used to observe, “I sell the landscapes, and
throw the figures into the bargain:” and sometimes he employed Filippo
Lauri and Courtois to insert them. But his figures, however faulty in
themselves, are always well adapted to promote the harmony of the whole
composition; being judiciously placed, and shaded, illuminated,
sharpened out, or rendered indistinct, with nearly as much skill as is
shown in the other parts of the picture. And not unfrequently, however
feebly drawn, they partake of that classical and poetic air, which
Claude, beyond every other landscape painter, has diffused over his
works.
It is said, and the circumstances of his early life render it probable,
that he was very deficient in general acquirements. Assuredly he had no
opportunities of becoming a profound scholar, nor in relation to his art
was it necessary that he should; why should he have sought through the
medium of books that imagery which lay before him in reality? Rome, and
its environs, the banks of the Tiber, and the broad Campagna, supplied
his imagination with the best food, and his pencil with inexhaustible
materials. He was accustomed to spend whole days in the open air, not
only studying Nature in her permanent aspects, but making memorandums of
every accidental and fleeting effect which presented itself to his
observation. Sandrart, who sometimes accompanied Claude in his
excursions, relates that he was accustomed to discourse on the visible
phenomena of nature with the intelligence of a philosopher; not only
noting effects, but explaining their causes with precision and
correctness, whether produced by reflection or refraction of light, by
dew, vapour, or other agencies of the atmosphere. Broad as is his style,
he entered minutely into detail, and made drawings of trees, shrubs, and
herbage, marking all their peculiarities of shape, growth, and foliage.
By this practice he was enabled to represent those objects with
undeviating accuracy, and to express, by a few decided touches, their
general character.
Amidst the splendour of his general effects, the distinguishing
qualities of objects are never neglected; fidelity is never merged in
manner; and hence it is, that the longer we look at his pictures, the
more vivid is the illusion, the more strongly is the reality of the
represented scene impressed upon us. Combining with his fine imagination
the results of observation thus long and intensely exercised, he
accomplished in his works that union of poetic feeling with accurate
representation of nature, which forms the highest excellence of art, and
in which, as a landscape painter, he stands unrivalled.