De mulieribus claris

The narrative typology that is the gallery of portraits interested  Boccaccio from the Amorosa visione on. With his De casibus this technique was utilised within a parenthetic project; then, in his De mulieribus claris, there is a return to a feminine codification deprived of moral preoccupation. 

The work has 104 pieces on as many famous ladies, of Christian as well as pagan tradition. The intent is the glorification of emergent personalities, both for virtue and nefariousness (examples are Medea, Flora and Sempronia, who are part of the collection). It is difficult to find literary antecedents, both for the attention dedicated to the female protagonists, which goes to fill a gap in both the Latin and the vernacular literary tradition, all centred upon the exaltation of male personalities, and the lay aim of exalting extraordinary enterprises, independently from the morality of the example.

A first edition, with 74 biographies can be dated 1361; the second and last, of 1362, has 104 portraits of as many women. The dedicatory of the work is Andrea Acciaiuoli, Niccolò’s sister and Countess of Altavilla. Contingent reasons can justify the choice, as Boccaccio had indeed been called back to Naples in those years by Acciaiuoli with the promise of important public offices, which later ended in nothing. A series of similarities with the proem to the Decameron have been noted in the introductory words to the work, where the accent is placed upon the consolatory qualities of the book in moments of female idleness (“suis quippe suffragiis tuis blandietur ociis”[1]).

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[1]De mulieribus claris, ed. V. Zaccaria, in All the works of Giovanni Boccaccio ed. V. Branca, vol. 10, Milan 1967, Dedica, 7, p. 20.