Abstract
Francesco Cieco da Ferrara, author of the Mambriano, has been an enigmatic figure in Italian literature. It is strange that so little is known of this important intermediary between Boiardo and Ariosto. Long after his death, it is true, some definite but extravagant things were written about him by literary men who probably felt the need of dressing up the poor poet: he was an eminent jurist, a theologian and philosopher. But we know only Cieco the minstrel, and common sense would question the truth of these assertions. Again, almost a hundred years after his death, the family name of Bello was bestowed upon Cieco by Francesco Buonamici, a philosopher and astronomer whose information about Italian literary matters was scant and inaccurate. Although scholars like Rua have followed the Bello clue without success, this cognomen has come down into our library catalogues and even into Rua's own edition of the Mambriano, Would it not be good sense to dismiss the Bello christening as the tardy and offhand mistake of an astrologer?
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