Boccaccio paid great attention to the layout of the Decameron in the manuscript he drew up towards the end of his life. Within the overall ornamental presentation of this manuscript, known as Hamilton 90 and believed to have been written circa 1370, one can clearly identify some graphic and chromatic effects that would regularly seem to be employed to mark out the different components of the text.

The red of the rubrics marks the 100 units or novellas of the collection[1] and the elaborate design of the initial letters indicates internal subdivisions in the narrative. Another distinguishing factor is the way the different designs for initial letters are used in the Hamilton 90 text.

Careful scrutiny shows how this variety of designs can be classified in five different types, which differ in their decoration (ruled vs. simple), colour (red/turquoise vs. yellow vs. blackish/brown) and dimensions (the capital letter does not touch other lines of writing over and above the one it is the beginning of or, respectively, it touches one, two, or four lines of writing over and above that of the word it is the first letter of)[2]. Albeit a part of the typical graphic and chromatic effects used in assembling a manuscript, the way Boccaccio uses capital letters does not seem to be limited to mere pictorial effect. The capital letter  also performs a precise metatextual role, attracting the reader’s attention to the artfully studied articulation of the narration and highlighting the constitutive units of the tale.

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[1]On the rubrics of the Centonovelle cfr. J. Usher, Le rubriche del «Decameron», “Medioevo Romanzo”, X (1985), pp. 391-418.

[2]It would thus seem possibile to identify a typology, which is illustrated in the table below:

Capital	Decoration	Colour	Dimension
1.Type	filleted	Alternately red and turquoise	Touches four lines plus its own
2. Type	filleted	Alternately red and turquoise	Touches two lines plus its own
3. Type	simple	Alternately red and turquoise	Touches one line plus its own
4. Type	simple	Touched in yellow	Touches no other lines
5.Tipo	simple	Blackish/brown	Touches no other lines

Cf. T. Nocita, Per una nuova paragrafatura del testo del Decameron. Appunti sulle maiuscole del cod. Hamilton 90 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz), “Critica del Testo”, II/3 (1999), pp. 925-934; Ead., La redazione hamiltoniana di Decameron I 5. Sceneggiatura di una novella, in Il racconto nel Medioevo romanzo. Atti del Convegno, Bologna, 23-24 ottobre 2000, Con altri contributi di Filologia romanza, Bologna 2002, pp. 351-366 [“Quaderni di Filologia Romanza”, 15 (2001)]; Ead. in collaboration with T. Crivelli, Teatralità del dettato, stratificazioni strutturali, plurivocità degli esiti: il Decameron fra testo, ipertesto e generi letterari, in Autori e lettori di Boccaccio. Atti del Convegno internazionale di Certaldo, Certaldo, 20-22 settembre 2001, ed. M. Picone, Florence 2002, pp. 209-233.

Decameron, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, ms. Hamilton 90, c. 10r.