Francesco da Barberino

Abstract

Tuscan writer Francesco da Barberino (b. c. 1264–d.1348) deserves special attention in medieval literature and art history for his illustrated didactic treatises teaching virtues and good manners to men and women—respectively, Documenti d’Amore (DA) and Reggimento e costumi di donna. Largely underestimated, his contribution to the intellectual movement referred to by Roberto Weiss as “Tuscan pre-humanism” (together with Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Geri d’Arezzo, Cino de Pistoia, and others), still awaits in-depth studies. Not to be confused with the younger Francesco da Barberino, the son of the notary “ser Nardo,” producing many copies of Dante’s Comedy, known as Danti dei Cento—see Sandro Bertelli, “I codici di Francesco di ser Nardo da Barberino,” Rivista di studi danteschi 3 (2003): 408–421. Our Francesco was eighty-three years old when the other finished his copy of Divine Comedy in the wonderful Codex Laurenziano Pluteo 90 sup. 125 in Florence, indicating the date 1347 in its colophon. A notary formed in Bologna’s University and then working for the bishops of Florence, the author of Documenti d’Amore had an encyclopedic culture, including Latin, Italian, and French languages and literatures. His works can illustrate the rise of lay scholars in Italian universities and cites, contributing to the development of vernacular poetry as well to the vulgarization trend (volgarizzamenti) in Florence under the influence of Brunetto Latini and his disciple Bono Giamboni. Didactic-allegorical form permitted him to leave to his public a prophetic message inspired by a deep religious conception of life, probably marked by Franciscan influence. The defense of Christian orthodoxy aimed his activity also in the fields of public painting and books illustration: texts and pictures of his own invention appeared in some lost frescoes in the Episcopal palaces in Florence and Treviso, as well as conceiving all the iconographic subjects of his works. Recently found and studied, his book of prayer named Officiolo is also richly illustrated with religious as well as profane images.