VIII. Calandrino’s cycle

Bruno, Buffalmacco, Maso del Saggio, Maestro Simone and Calandrino are the protagonists of a cycle of novellas dedicated to the prowess of a circle of funsters from Florence. The procedure of linking the single stories  by means of the repetition of the same characters goes beyond recourse to a technique of creating a framework that is typical of western novelistic tradition, so exploited in Petronius’ Satyricon and Apuleius’ Golden Donkey. That which novellas 3, 5, 6 and 9, in the eighth day, and 3 and 5, in the ninth, represent is a vivid portrait of Florentine society of the time, however built around the stereotyped physiognomy of the protagonists, with a procedure that was later to be adopted by the so called commedia dell’arte or improvised drama. Behind the mask of the scoffing Bruno and Buffalmacco we recognise the semblance of the painters Bruno di Giovanni and Buonamico Buffalmacco, recalled in Giorgio Vasari’s Vite. To Buonamico are attributed the frescoes of the Triumph of Death in the Duomo of Pisa, which it is hypothesised could be an important iconographic intertext, used by Boccaccio in the invention of the cornice of the Decameron. We can also reconstruct Calandrino’s identity, in actual fact Nozzo di Perino, and discover he was a minor painter, and thus not a well known one such as Bruno and Buffalmacco[1]. His nickname is built upon the diminutive of “calandra”, which is a bird similar to a skylark, and expresses all his gullibility, portraying him as a little lark, which would seem to be purpose made for an “uccellata” or birding, that is to say be caught in the trap of the hoax.

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[1]M. Picone, L’arte della beffa: l’ottava giornata, in Introduzione al Decameron, a c. di M. Picone-M. Mesirca, Firenze 2004, pp. 203-225, in part. p. 213 e sgg..

Decameron, VIII, 3. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. Fr. 239, c. 216r. Boccaccio visualizzato: narrare per parole e per immagini fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, a c. di V. Branca, Turin 1999, vol. III, p. 216.