Boiardo, MATTEO MARIA

Boiardo, MATTEO MARIA, Count of Scandiano, one of the greater Italian poets, was born in 1434 at Scandiano, a village situated at the foot of the Lombard Apennines. He studied at the university of Ferrara, and in 1462 married the daughter of the Count of Norellara. He lived principally at the court of Ferrara on terms of intimate friendship with Duke Borso and Duke Ercole, by the latter of whom he was employed on important diplomatic missions, and appointed in 1481 governor of Modena, and in 1487 governor of Reggio. As an administrator he was distinguished for his clemency, and is said to have held that no crime should be visited with capital punishment. He died at Reggio in 1494. Boiardo has been called the 'Flower of Chivalry.' His fame rests on the Orlando Innamorato (1486), a long narrative poem in which the romances of the Carlovignian cycle are recast into Ottava rima. Full of rich and graceful fancy, this is the only work in which the spirit of chivalry is found in union with the spirit of the Renaissance. The chief characters, the Paladins of Charlemagne, are led in a maze of adventure from Paris to Spain, Hungary, Africa, and the far East; Orlando, whose love for the eastern princess Angelica is the central subject, being none other than the hero of the old Chanson de Roland. Ariosto adopted Boiardo's characters and magic machinery, and brought his narrative to a close in the Orlando Furioso, by which the fame of the earlier poem has been unfairly obscured. After going through sixteen editions before 1545, Boiardo's work became almost forgotten, its vigorous but rough and provincial style being ungenial to the Florentine taste. Boiardo's other works comprise various Latin eclogues, a versification of Lucian's Timon, translations of Herodotus, the Ass of Lucian, and the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and a series of sonnets and Canzoni (Reggio, 1499). The best edition of Boiardo is by Panizzi (9 vols. Lond. 1830). See also Symonds's Renaissance in Italy.